When was the last time you invested in your business? Have you scaled back your investment recently, or increased it? Are you updating your knowledge and skills, or hoping that the expertise you have gained previously will see you through industry changes now and in the future?

One of the challenges for social media evangelists is balancing the benefits with a healthy dose of reality. Many businesses are turning to social media not because they believe it is more effective than some other approaches to lead generation, but because they have heard that it is cheap or free.

This is a worry for two reasons.

1. There is always a cost to doing any kind of promotion, and for many of us time is actually not just money but worth more than money.
2. This fear of investing symptom hints at bigger problems, more fundamental than simple lead pipeline challenges.

I am a complete social media advocate, to the point where a large part of my work is helping people get more business with social media and answering related questions, but social media is NOT a replacement for investing in your business.

At the very least you should be investing time not just in “doing” your business, but growing, improving and creating systems for it. That is about productivity, testing, analysis and education.

We see around us lots of short term patches, fixes and “hot tricks”, and while some of these things might work for a time, it is not a way to build a long term sustainable business.

Yes, social media works, but it works best when allied with all your existing and proven best practices. After social media there will be another tool du jour. This does not mean you ought to dismiss what has worked for you in the past.

Now more than ever you need to invest time and money in making your business the strongest it can be. Create new services and products, launch and relaunch, learn from mistakes, network and partner. It will help you weather the storms and when the world economy picks up then you will be best placed to gain from it.