Swimming the Dreaded Social Media Channel

Swimming the Dreaded Social Media Channel

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m too old (read ‘outdated’) to be a social media butterfly or if it’s my anti-social personality disorders, but the thought of a Social Media Blitz terrifies me.  So when my marketing consultant advised me to ‘develop a social media footprint’, my first thought was that she was trying to be funny.  She wasn’t. 

My next hope was that she’d do it for me.  She wouldn’t. 

I argued that I want to be an author not a socialite.  She said that I would make a very fine author, albeit a poor and unread one.  Then she sent me her bill.

I tried to ignore her advice—more out of obstinacy than disagreement.  She was right.  I knew she was, but that didn’t mean I wanted to follow her advice.  It took me a full week to pick up my feet and dial her up again.  She didn’t bother apologizing for me being wrong and I never rubbed it in that she was right.  She just told me that the social media marketplace is my penance for getting to use a high-tech laptop instead of my old Underwood typewriter and an hour later my legs were already quivering as I was sweating like Shaun T at the 24^th minute. 

At first, I’d thought it was the socializing aspect that scared me.  It wasn’t, though.  The thing about social media marketing that truly terrified me was how vast and mysterious it seemed.  I felt like Matthew Webb sitting on the Admiralty Pier, looking out across the English Channel and wondering if he would soon be eating Encornets farcis in Paris or if the cuttlefish would be nibbling at his drowning body halfway across.  It’s the pure enormity of the task that is so daunting, but if ol’ Cap’n Webb could brave the swim then I could face a few Tweeterers because, as Webb’s inscription reads, “Nothing Great is Easy”.

So how do you face that dreaded social media market if you’re scared of social media?  Same way you swim the English Channel if you don’t know how to float. 

Step 1.  Get in the water—They say the hardest stroke is the first.  Before you can swim 39 miles across rough water, you’ve got to be in the water.  Before you can sell 50,000 books online, you have to commit yourself to learning how to use social media.  You’ve got to set your fears aside and jump in.  There are so many terms and sites that it seems easier to risk the English Channel at first.  Flamers and trolls lurk everywhere.  Unwritten and often baffling social etiquettes change with the weather of the day.  At first glimpse, the social media marketplace can be just as daunting to a newcomer as the wide ocean to a non-swimmer.  Even to those pre-disposed to the strange world of social media, its use for marketing can still be scary.  But nobody goes from drowning to the Olympic Swim Team in one day and nobody should expect to become marketing savvy in only one weekend.  Take some time, read books, browse blogs, see what interests you, take small strokes, and keep your nose above the waterline. 

Step 2.  Learn to swim—You’re finally in the water, but you’re only wading in the shallow end right now.  Everybody knows the big money is in the deep end, but you can’t just pull up your knickers and dive deeper.  It takes time.  It takes a plan.  It takes coaching and lessons and practice and, most of all, patience.  Are there people who get on the net one day and get rich the next?  Sure, but there’s also people who buy one lottery ticket and hit the big jackpot.  Do you think you’ll be ‘that guy’?  Maybe you will be and, if you are, I commend you on your luck and wish you the best.  But, for the rest of us, we’ll have to put in the hours and learn how to make our name/money the old-fashioned way.  There is a step-by-step plan to swimming the English Channel (look it up if you need a new goal or a long nap) and so it should be with your marketing plan as well.  Write out your plan.  Get it on paper.  Start big—your goals.  Tighten it up a bit—how you’re going to get there.  Then focus right at the hands which will do the work and accomplish your goals—write out a description of you, your company, and your products.  Nobody knows you better than you.  Choose which social media platforms will work best for you and then begin learning how to use them first.

Step 3.  Implement your plan—Goals are just dreams unless you work to achieve them.  You already know what your dream is and you even know how to achieve it.  So all you have to do now is just do it.  Sound too simple?  Well, it is that simple.  There are thousands of books about how to achieve your goals and I can summarize them all right now: 

CHOOSE YOUR GOAL

LIST THE STEPS TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOAL

DO THE STEPS

Now you owe me $14.98 for saving you a trip to the bookstore to buy a book that says something you already know.  What those steps are and how to get through them is the more difficult part and each company/product is so different that there is no ONE singular solution.  Your goal or your vision of success is different than anybody else’s, even if they’re selling the same product.  The required steps to attain that success is similarly different.  So focus on you and your goals rather than how somebody else achieved theirs.

Step 4.  Monitor your success—No matter how hard you swim against some currents, you’ll never make the other coast.  You’ve got to see what is working and what isn’t.  If it’s working—improve it.  If it isn’t—change it until it does work.  Sometimes you’ve got to tack from starboard to port to get upwind and sometimes you’ve just got to come about.  Whether you change your tactics or simply abandon them, your efforts won’t be wasted as you continue to learn and improve your social media marketing presence.  With each failure, you will gain more understanding of how to succeed and, if you stay the course, you will eventually make land.

I’m far from an expert on social media marketing at this moment, but I soon will be.  I might succeed or I might fail.  I might be eating croissants or I might drown, but there is no ‘or’ in this statement—I WILL develop a social media footprint.  I’m hoping that it’s a Sasquatch print and not just a size 11W, but I’ll be happy just to be making imprints on the landscape. 

Next week’s blog assignment will be to give this week’s some bite.  Please tune in to read last night’s discussion when I asked my 17 y/o what the difference between a damned # and @ was.  Despite my ignorance, I’ve already achieved nearly ten percent of my SMM goals in a relatively short timeframe.  

Just imagine what I could do if I actually knew what I was doing…  MjH

As we progress through the weeks, what do you think I’m missing?  If you’ve got questions or concerns that I can help clarify, feel free to leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to help.  MjH

HOMEWORK

·         Decide whether you want to pay for advertisement or do it yourself.

·         Determine what you want to do with your company/product.

RESOURCES

·         Testing the Social Media Marketing Waters by mjHangge—next week’s blog post on mjHangge.net

·         30-Minute Social Media Marketing by Susan Gunelius