“If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you jump off it too?”

As a kid, you may have been scolded by your mom for doing something, and then told her, “Well, everyone else was doing it!” She would then respond with the question above, and if you were a real smartass you would answer with “How high is it?,” or something else equally stupid that would surely land you in more trouble.

When it comes to your business, you may sometimes feel like that little kid again. If all your competitors are doing something, you start to feel like you should do it too. Maybe you should; depending on what your customers are looking for, you may be leaving a gap that someone else will fill. But before you start something new, you should make sure there’s a good business reason for doing it, rather than doing it just because it seems like the new thing that everyone is doing. Remember, there are only 24 hours in a day, so time spent on something new takes attention away from what you were doing before. Any distraction from your core business should at least be supporting that core business.

Consider, for example, the growth of media sites run by non-media companies. As content marketing has taken off over the years, firms have built up their social media presence, interacting with customers on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The newest trend is the emergence of “news sites” that focus on news related to the core product; rather than using existing social media platforms, companies are creating standalone websites that are purely focused on news rather than direct advertising.

It’s one thing to run a marketing campaign; it’s another to create a side business or brand that is very different from what you normally do. A prime example of this is Van Winkle, “an independent media brand, covering the science, culture, and curiosities of sleep,” created by Casper, a mattress company. They offer both a site and a weekly newsletter addressing the science, health effects, and cultural aspects of sleep. Unlike other news sites from media companies, they do not generate advertising revenue (there are no ads), and the oversight of this brand takes attention away from the core function of producing and selling mattresses. Is it worth it?

Much of this depends on how you identify your company’s place in the world. Just as Uber frames itself as a tech company rather than as a taxi company, Casper positions itself as “a sleep company” rather than a mattress manufacturer. That being the case, a media site may fit perfectly into their long-term plans. If your new idea supports your vision for your organization, and it can add value to the organization, then perhaps you should do it (just be careful about changing your company’s vision to accommodate the cool new thing; the cool new thing should instead fit into your company’s vision)

Before you start some new venture, you need to have a clear understanding of your company’s purpose, and recognize how this new approach fits into it. If you are doing it because you see a way to add to the overall value of your enterprise, then go for it. But if you’re doing it just because everyone else is doing it and you don’t want to get left behind, even though you don’t see the real value of it, then ask yourself if you really, really want to jump off that bridge.