Social Media is NOT Magic
I might as well start cross posting. :) I fired up a blog on what I do on Word Press over a year ago. However, what I realized fast was it was more important to hustle and network to get clients than anything else. I've fired it back up and here a post that I added yesterday. I've turned comments off here, but you're welcome to leave me a note there.
- Photo courtesy of Hryck on Flickr
I've just found a lot of people who seem to think that social media is some mysterious and magical thing. That sentiment has inspired me to fire this blog back up.
As someone who works in this very fun field, I get that a lot. I get this will current clients. I get this with possible clients. I also just see it a lot in passing.
The social web is not magic. It's something that humans have done forever: communicate. I just HATE seeing requests like this:
I am seeking someone who is an expert at this who can take my (whatever it is but redacted because this is a quote) and work your magic.
Look. It's NOT magic, and, honestly, as much as I love the thought-leaders in this space, we're all learning as we go. I'm not going to call any of them experts. This is all new and even the people who have expertise are learning and adapting to new tools and resources that are constantly being launched.
It takes knowledge of the tools. It takes knowing how to use them. It takes strategy. It takes trying, measuring, and adjusting, as needed. It takes reading case studies. It takes reading on what people are doing. I'll also admit it takes sharing what you're doing (and, yes, I've been neglecting that; building a business is HARD.)
However, most important is that a successful social media strategy takes also having GREAT products and/or GREAT content that helps people solve their problems or engages people on an emotional level.(*Also, before someone wanders in to say people are just using "magic" and similar terms as a figure of speech or play on words and they understand that it takes knowledge and strategy, I'll agree that maybe that's the case, for some. However, a lot of people do seem to then there is some mysterious alchemy going on, and that's not true.)
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