If you own a small business, many consultants, social media agencies, and business professionals will tell you that social media is an excellent way to help you grow your business, build community, generate brand awareness and more. And it is. However, do you even know what platform(s) your customers are on or what they are saying about you or your business? If so, are you actually generating conversations with them?

With sites like Foursquare, Yelp, Urban Spoon, Google and others, it’s a fair bet your business already has an internet presence (even if you don’t have a website-gasp!) because customers will be talking about you there. In addition, when you add social media into the mix, you’ll find people posting, tweeting, creating videos and beyond on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube that talk about your brand.

Given Copyblogger’s recent exit from Facebook though, their experience should remind marketers everywhere to only use those social platform(s) that best reach your target audience. When conversation ends on one platform (or if it never really got started there), it’s time to reconsider whether it’s a good use of your time or if you are simply spinning your wheels.

Social media results are only generated when you truly connect with people and create relationships based on good conversation.

If your social media efforts are falling flat, maybe you and I should start a conversation. After we discuss your target audience, any specific business goals, your existing social media efforts, etcetera, we just might discover untapped ways to reach more of your existing customers and potential prospects to help them solve their problem(s).

Let’s talk about it. I’m listening.

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn.

Duane Drzadinski is a social media evangelist that is passionate about helping individuals, entrepreneurs and small business owners generate results from their online efforts. In early 2014, he began helping Milwaukee become more sustainable by launching Compost Express, an organic recycling business. Follow Duane on Twitter @duanedrzadinski