These days, it’s not often that you still hear skepticism about the value of social media. That’s why we were taken aback when an auto dealer posted on a Wall Street Journal blog that he had tried social media but it hadn’t worked for him.

But all’s well that ends well.

A representative of an email marketing firm was quick to reply to “strongly encourage” him to try social media again, but with these points in mind:

“There’s no question that social media is the channel for driving world of mouth in the digital age, but it is not a marketing cure-all. It needs to be a complement to your existing marketing and advertising mix (e.g., social media works great in conjunction with email marketing.”)

“Social media is all about relationship building, so it takes some time and consistency to generate great results. That said, there are a lot of great tools out there today that make it easier for small businesses to leverage social media.”

We agree – and can’t resist pointing out that the TraffikWorks Media suite of tools are just what the doctor ordered. We offer both email marketing and social marketing from a single web interface as part of a total solution. 

The key is your interactive “Wall.” You can create content on the Wall, and so can members of your online community. Content that appears on your Wall can be automatically duplicated on your company’s Twitter Page and Facebook Fan Page.

There’s more. The content will also appear in the Facebook newsfeeds and Twitter timelines of your online community members. So the friends of your online community members will see the content and link back to your site.

In the process, you grow your pool of prospects, customers, and online community members. And there is an additional benefit: the links and referrals from Facebook and Twitter back to your site boost your search engine ranking.

So your site is more easily found, attracting still more traffic. The whole process is viral. More and more people find the site and join your community. Visitors become buyers, then refer friends to your business.