Don’t Use Social Media to Promote Your Home Business
November 29, 2008 by Jean Murray
At the moment I’m trying valiantly to get going on Social Media, but I’m overwhelmed. Social media, for those of you who are wondering, is the recent phenomenon of connecting with others on websites for mutual information and promotion. The problem, as I see it, is that there too many of these sites. And I don’t see the value – what are we all supposed to be doing on these sites? How will we make money? Will someone see me on Twitter and hire me?
I have been on Twitter, but all I find is people self-promoting or talking about their cats. I am connected via LinkedIn and FaceBook, but MySpace is so GenY I can’t see myself on it. Jenny Cromie over at The Golden Pencil lists lots of social media sites for freelancers, but I don’t want to get so bogged down in social media that I don’t have time for my work. And now we have social media sites to keep track of social media sites.
I’m sure there will be lots of people who think this is heresy, but I just don’t get the point of “social media.” There has to be a better way to promote a business online. What do you think? Have you received business by connecting to people via social media? If so, which ones? Do you really care what other people are doing online? I guess I want someone to tell me to go to THIS SITE (whatever it is) and get connected with all the people I need to connect to in order to promote my business.
“Social media, we don need no steenking social media. “ (Treasure of the Sierra Madre)
Ok, first there is no magic bullet. And its quite easy to get overwhelmed with social media so don’t try and do it all. The shotgun approach that you appear to be using is just wasting your time. Focus on one or two markets and figure out what social media (if any) that they use then go there, if your target market isn’t involved with social medial then don’t waste your time. Also remember that social media takes time, so be patient
Thanks, Jeff. It makes sense to me to find out what my market is doing and where they are. It also makes it much less overwhelming.
Jean
It’s all a matter of intent and expectations. “Don’t” implies that social media and business should never mix. This isn’t the case at all. There are a ton of businesses that are thriving and being promoted through social media. My advice is simply to ensure that you meet folks’ expectations. If the social network is a ‘business free’ environment, then don’t promote your business there.
I, too, have found social media rather overwhelming and time consuming. Even though I’m signed on several, I don’t have time to use them. I answer e-mails when friends and family contact me, but I don’t have enough hours in my days to get everything done that I need to. So I can’t see adding to it with much time spent on social media. Because once I get on a site, I can see where you can spend a lot of time exploring/investigating what others are doing. Probably, as Jeff says, I should just concentrate on one instead of using the scatter approach.
I do feel I need to keep up to date on what social media is all about because that’s the way of the cyber/electronic world. In one of my businesses, I work with young people who use social media and text messaging. So Granny Mary has to keep up to speed!
I’m taking my time, watching, seeing which social media will bring the greatest rewards. I figure over the next year these things will settle out to just a few, like what happened with search engines. I’ll wait to get fully involved until I see who is going to be out there after the dust clears.