Should you do the Social Media "thing"?

So here’s my gripe. I always here people talking about whether the social media “thing” is a good thing or if it’s a bad thing. Here’s my problem… Who cares – it doesn’t matter. It just is what it is. When the cell phone became popular did people talk about the positives and negatives? Probably – but I think I only know 1 person who is an adult who doesn’t have a cell phone. In fact, I don’t even have a home phone – just a cell phone.

So here’s the deal. It is what it is and the face book, the twitter, the whatever are all avenues of communication that you can use to communicate with whomever you want.

Yes – if you’re dumb about it and say things that are inappropriate or can cost you your job then maybe you deserve it. Just be smart about it. If you partied at a kegger this past weekend do all of your clients and co-workers really need to know that? Probably not – keep that crap to yourself or to your personal and private facebook page.

Use your blog, twitter accounts, linked in account and public facebook pages to share your knowledge, your thoughts and opinions and most of all information that people will find interesting and helpful. It’s all about being real, authentic, and actually giving a crap about others.

The bottom line… If you really don’t care then don’t bother. It is time consuming and it takes effort to keep up with. But at the same time – if you do care and actually have things to say that can help others then why keep it to yourself? Put yourself out there, position yourself the way you want others to see you. You hold the power in your own hands now.

Is it a good thing? Yes! Should you do it? Yes – if you give a crap.

That’s all.

Happy New Year to all my fellow Jewish Friends.

By The Way - http://thecynicalgirl.com/ Laurie Ruettimann - Amen sister. Read her blog. It's great.

Don't Go Diving in the Ocean Until You Learn to Swim

I used to work a lot with small businesses as a marketing consultant. I had my own company for a little while and almost each client had the same story. They wanted to get onto the "internet/facebook bandwagon". You know - that internet thing is really where they got stuck. But it went much further than they realized. It wasn't just that internet thing that they didn't understand but it was the foundation of their business. Some of my clients had lost sight of why they started their business in the first place and most of them never really took the time to get to know their who their clients were. That's really where the problem was and at that point I realized that I had my work cut out for me. In some ways, they expected me to build something from nothing which wasn't easy.

I understand as a small business owner you want to focus on what will bring in money because after all - what's really more important than the bottom line? If you don't have money coming in then how are you expected to survive? I totally get that. But before diving into an ocean filled will sharks and exotic fish, you want to do a little research - about the creatures you'd encounter and the environment. You want to know what you should wear and other ways you should prepare before diving in. Similarly, you want to do some research before starting. Get to know your customers - who are they, what do they think about at night, what problems do they deal with, where do you fit in, how can you help your customers live their lives easier or better? This is an ongoing process - you can't just read a biography and forget about it. Your customers are changing and adapting and you must do the same in order to be relevant.

I'll get into the "internet thing" in a later post. But for now, where would you be without your customers? Probably not in business. So in terms of the bottom line - what could possibly be more important than educating yourself on your customers?

--- FYI - I'm no expert and am certainly not pretending to be. There's more people than I can name or even know that are marketing gurus out there. I just figure it's about time I choose a focus for this blog and frankly, if there's anything I'm most passionate about, it's business, marketing and graphic design.

Here's the post that got me thinking on the purpose of my blog. So my goal is to keep this blog alive, interesting and helpful. Ultimately - I don't want it to suck and it would be nice if eventually people would read it. :)


http://www.copyblogger.com/does-my-content-suck/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Copyblogger+%28Copyblogger%29