Look Before You Leap

I love the web. I’ve been doing business on it for as long as there has been an internet! (Well, maybe not exactly, but close enough. Purists tell me that the web has been around since the late 70s so maybe not). In some ways I’m an early adopter: I get excited about new technology or new marketing channels or new opportunities to show my stuff online. But take note, I said: "In some ways I’m an early adopter". I admit that I’m not always.

In working with other entrepreneurs, I always hear the buzz for the latest and greatest trend. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that I heard the blog buzz. "Oh, you HAVE to have a blog". Everyone had a blog. Businesses had blogs. People were writing about blogs. It was all about blogs.

Recently, it was all about Facebook. "You HAVE to have a Facebook page". Everyone was figuring out how they could incorporate Facebook into their business. People were writing about Facebook. It was all about Facebook.

Today, it’s Twitter. "You HAVE to be on Twitter". etc.

Well, I agree. To a point. Blogs are good, and can be helpful for business, as can a Facebook page and Twitter. I’m an early adopter and I get excited about these new opportunities as they appear. But I’m only an early adopter to the point where I believe it will benefit my business.

I got a blog early because its value to my business was clear. I took a little longer to get onto Facebook — it was much farther along in its ascension in the public’s eye — because I needed to first identify the value to my business. Only then did I get excited about it and fully on board.

These are exciting opportunities but they can also suck so much time from our lives. If I signed up to every social media site that I was invited to, I’d never get any work done. So instead, here is what I advise people to do:

First, find the sites that are right for your business. For example, consider the business-specific social networking sites of LinkedIn, Xing, and Plaxo. They all have their benefits and drawbacks. Figure out which of them are right for your business and pursue one. (Or, if you only sell B2B, consider doing all three but ignoring the Facebooks and Myspaces and Bebos of the world which could be more appropriate for a B2C business).

Second, determine your intended outcome from that site. Some sites might be appropriate to position you as an expert. Others might be a great way to build up a community of people who are all talking about your topic. Other sites might drive traffic to your site. Or they might offer combinations of these outcomes. You need to figure out what outcomes you desire from each site you’re on.

Third, figure out what you need to do to achieve those outcomes. Then act.

A great example to use is LinkedIn. It’s a good site for a couple of different purposes. One person might want to position themselves as an authority on a topic so they will use the LinkedIn Questions feature and aggressively answer questions posed by the LinkedIn users. Another person might want to use LinkedIn to generate leads, so they would ignore the questions feature and instead work through their list of connections to find who could be a potential client.

This thought process needs to take place for every site you participate in. And as popular as they might be, it is the right decision to drop any site that is not right for your business and comes with a measurable outcome that you can work towards.

Like all marketing, web marketing needs to be approached with plenty of thought and then intentional action. Just because it’s a free medium (unlike television or radio marketing, for example) doesn’t mean that every new opportunity is the right one to choose.

Sorry, ecademy.com, I won’t be signing up.

Contemporary VA

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