Wearables recently surveyed readers to find out how, or if, they’re using social media to market their businesses. The results of the in-depth survey will be published throughout 2017 in the magazine’s regular Numbers Crunch feature.

Though the majority of our readers are taking advantage of Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or other networks to boost their business profile, 18% of those we surveyed say they are not active on any social site. Why not? Some decorators say they aren’t computer savvy enough; others don’t see the value of social media for business-to-business companies, preferring to rely on referrals or other forms of marketing.

Below are a few of their specific reasons for eschewing social media.

• I’m looking for a person to help guide me toward getting it going. I don’t want to do something lame.
• I feel like it would be a big commitment to keep updating it.
• I find it to be trite and trendy. Our website and face-to-face communication with our customers is our link.
• I like to use targeted means of communicating and like to target specific people. I believe that social networking blasting shows a lack of sense of direction in targeting customers. If you’re posting to a social network, it needs to be broad, and currently, I’ve been focused on targeting specific prospects and clients to get business.
• My customers are business-to-business, and they do not look for my type of product on social media. When I tried it, I got a LOT of individuals looking to purchase single items. I sell larger custom orders. I wasted a lot of time fielding inappropriate inquiries.
• It takes too much of my time.  I do, however, realize I am shortchanging myself in not doing so.
• We do fairly well with the old-school word-of-mouth style. Our younger employees who set up social media for us are no longer here, and the rest of us do not engage in social media, so there has been no follow-up.
• We get too many inquiries from folks who aren’t serious, especially when it comes to payment, when we aren’t dealing in person.