Don’t Miss The Social Media Boat!

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

I completely understand how crazy the internet marketing game can get these days. It is really hard to pin point what exactly each company should be doing, where they should be doing it, and at what frequency is right. If you chose to submerse yourself in the search engine marketing game these are questions that oftentimes take a great deal of time to figure out and get right. Things change quickly and you have to be willing to really roll with the punches if you want to get ahead. With frustration levels come bursts of emotion that can sometimes get the best of you, but there are certain red flags that you should look for in yourself when it comes to social media.

If you say these following things to yourself then you might be missing the boat for social media:

Social Media Marketing is just a fad!
False! The reality is that everything in life is a fad and some fads just last longer than others. Stonewashed jeans were a fad, big puffy hair was a fad…social media is an era. If social media lasts 10 years are you going to say “I told you so” or are you going to regret that you missed out on a potentially large business building effort for the last ten years? Don’t let denial get the best of you because social media is an entirely new communication effort. Much like the newspaper and the magazine, social media is aimed at bringing a new method of communication into the business game. Kicking it to the curb because you think that it won’t last long is not really an option.

Oh, social media is not right for my business!
How do you know? Have you taken the time to really explore the space to see what is going on? What if it is quiet and all of a sudden one day a potential client or customer does happen to search for what you offer? Are you willing to not be visible? The reality of social media is that it is right for every business. It truly does not matter how obscure or niche your product or service might be, there is an audience in the social space for you, you just have to draw them out of the woodwork. Look at it like a giant networking event; you just don’t know who or what you will bump into.

I just don’t have time for social media marketing!
Yes, social media can take some time depending on how much you want to invest into it, but it doesn’t mean that you have to spend your whole day on Twitter or Facebook. A short amount of time every day or week is better than zero amount of time spent. You can spend 30 minutes or an hour a week to get things started which will at least allow the ball to get rolling in the right direction. Nobody says that you have to spend half of your day trying to find your audience online, but you should try to spend some time throughout the week testing the waters. Your audience is there waiting to hear from you. Are you going to deprive them of your business message?

I don’t want people to get mad at me if I start using it.
Why would people get mad at you? Do you plan on offending them? The reality is that, unless you are a very large brand, you are not going to leave a tarnished mark so easily. You have to really shoot yourself in the foot in order to receive a reputation management issue in the social space. If you are worried about self-promotion, don’t be. Every business that uses social media is indirectly conducting some sort of self-promotion. There are ways to do it tastefully and there are ways to do it non-tastefully. Remember that social media is all about sharing too, so if you include the right combination of material you will be just fine.

Creating excuses as to why you can’t enter the social media space is not going to help you grow your business. Just realize that it is OK to enter the space by testing the waters with your toes, but you have to be able to at least venture into the space to see what your niche is working with online.