What Do Dieting and Social Media Marketing Have in Common?
What Do Dieting and Social Media Marketing Have in Common?
Stop the Insanity!
“It’s official. It’s now impossible to keep up with the irrelevant data, false claims, illogical conclusions, and plain bad journalism associated with positive claims about social media,” says Robert Bacal, CEO of Bacal and Associates.
It’s hard to not feel just like Bacal. The din of misinformation is a major hurdle for our businesses. We’re constantly being told “do this, do that, but not like this, this way.” And then everything changes.
“No single person could even locate most of the misinformation. It’s just as impossible to explain why and how the numbers are wrongly interpreted. There are simply not enough hours in the day. The ‘expert pool’ is totally polluted, and now mainstream media, who depend on these social media experts, are reporting completely bogus and nutty things about social media success,” says Bacal, who clearly feels the pain of business owners and corporate executives charged with social media marketing.
Here’s What to Do: Choose What Not to Do
Where to start? Let’s tune out the noise. When it comes to social media marketing, there are plenty of opportunities to not invest time in trivial nonsense—to choose what not to do.
Action item: Next time you see an overzealous list of facts about how awesomely huge, fast, or urgent the social web is, consider asking yourself how relevant that fact is to the task at hand, selling. If there’s very little (or nothing at all) to do with the information, simply tune it out.
Yes, Facebook is the size of a country. And? YouTube is the second largest search engine. And? Fifteen percent of bloggers spend 10 hours or more each week blogging. And? Twenty-five percent of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. And? Twitter is adding 300,000 users a day. And?
If you can’t readily do anything with the information, just tune it out. The anecdote may be interesting, but how is it relevant to your business? Do you have time for enthusiastic or impressive anecdotes that don’t help you do things that plug into sales? Does your marketing team?
Much of your success will hinge on deciding what you do not need to be doing every day. To accomplish this, start shutting off anything noisier than it is useful. For some of us, this idea is a bit scary because deciding what not to do is a bit counter-intuitive. And honestly, managing your day better will require some effort and diligence on your part. Becoming liberated (and you will feel liberated!) takes focus, patience, and a belief in your business instinct—that “doing less of some things” is the right thing to do.
Let me know if this helps!
