The Truth About Using Social Media and Social Networking for Your Business
ByYou hear ad nausea about the need to use Social Media and Social Network Marketing for your business. But you don’t have extensive time to spend on these networks, who does? You don’t have the money to hire someone to spend hours doing it for you. You don’t want to use spam oriented automated systems either.
You surely don’t have endless hours to spend on Twitter, Facebook or MySpace working countless hours to attract new business prospects.
And be honest, do you like letting strangers now your most intimate details of your life? Maybe, but probably not.
And how about small talk with bunches of people daily in hopes to convert them into a sale? It is almost hypocritical don’t you think? I tried this and became quite depressed of having to spend so much time online.
All that being said we know and can not deny that social networking does works but at the same time it is EXTREMELY inefficient, un-trackable, and unpredictable. How many hours would you have to spend building and networking with Twitter followers, Facebook friends and so on? What is your goal with all this?
Most experts fail to mention just how tedious this work is. It sounds easy, but it really isn’t. There is a lot to learn, and the time, well, it is very labor intensive.
There are many of us who have tried the smoozing, sharing pictures and videos etc. And this does work, but how much time will you need to put into it so that it works for you?
All of my SEO clients have basically refused to do any of it with me offering to do some of it for them! I have jumped through hoops trying to do a little for them and then I just gave up. If they can’t spend the time, why in the world am I going to do it! And frankly, they are right; they need to spend their time running their business. But the few times I did do it, the results were amazing. I understand though, they like you, and like me need to spend the time building our business.
So what is the answer then? We are all looking for solutions.
Here a few:
1. Hire a young person who you trust, and let them learn the “ropes” of how to do it. There are many experts who teach how to do it in many different ways.
2. If you are lucky, you might find an overseas person to hire for $5 or $6 an hour. But I can tell you that it takes a while to get them trained and my experience has been that it not only wasted my money but MY time.
3. Utilize social media in a different manner: IGNORE the “networking” bits and focus on MARKETING LEVERAGE instead. And I DO NOT mean selling within the social networks when I use the word “marketing”.
