My Social Media Marketing Fears and How I’m Overcoming Them
By Janis Fisher Chan
Guest Contributor
Spoiler alert: I’m about to give away my age. The fact is, I am not of the social media generation. I’d much rather chat with my friends over a glass of wine than browse Facebook or Instagram to see what they had for dinner.
But now I have a website of my own. If I want the site to be successful (meaning that I want people to see it), I have to learn to love social media.
So that’s what I’m doing. I’m learning to use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media tools to connect with people who have an interest in my topic: home swaps and short-term rentals.
It’s not easy. I’d still rather spend my down time playing FreeCell or talking on the phone than surfing social media sites. But I love to learn, and I’ve already learned a lot.
You can’t farm it out (at least not completely, at least not at the beginning)
If I’d had a lot of venture capital, maybe I’d have hired a firm to take care of all my social media marketing.
But then I wouldn’t have learned anything.
At the beginning, I worked with a series of consultants who had good social media resumes. Those people taught me a lot about what it took to market a website. But I quickly realized that to make the best use of their (expensive) time, I first needed an in-depth understanding of how it all worked.
If you start at zero, be ready for a steep learning curve
As an instructional designer, I have one valuable skill: I know how to learn. During my career, I’ve learned how to process bank loans, write corporate reports, manage retail stores, repair trucks…topics I knew nothing about when I began a project.
I applied my learning skills to the topic of social media. I focused on:
- Searching the web for “how to…” articles
- Subscribing to social media marketing newsletters and blogs
- Following popular social media sites
- Chatting with people who frequently use social media (including my son and daughter)
- Asking lots and lots of (mostly stupid) questions
Apply what you’re learning
The thing about a learning curve is that it’s not really a curve. It’s more like a mountain. If you wait to reach the top you might never get anything accomplished. And even when you get there, you’ll see another incline to scale, and another…it’s a process, not an event, and you build strength as you climb.
After an intense period of absorbing information, I began to apply all that new learning by…
- Setting up a Facebook page for my business
- Signing up for Twitter and Pinterest
- Following people, commenting on pages and blog posts, and posting content of my own
- Joining Facebook and LinkedIn groups that focused on travel, short-term rental and home exchange
Make a plan to achieve your goals
The social media experts I worked with had one thing in common: they all wanted to start with a plan.
I balked.
It’s not that I don’t believe in planning: I know it’s key for any successful venture. In fact, I used to teach people exactly that. But at that point, I wasn’t ready to plan a social media campaign. I didn’t know enough.
But once I felt that I had a good basic understanding of social media and the role it plays in marketing a web site, I sat down and developed a plan that…
- clearly defined my audience
- articulated my mission (my web site’s raison d’être)
- described my long-term and short-term goals
- identified specific actions for reaching my goals
To put your plan into action, you might need help
My social media marketing plan includes lots of action steps and tasks. But my website isn’t my money job – I still take on writing and learning projects for clients. Doing everything that needed to be done would take more time than I had available. I needed help.
This time, I looked for someone who loved social media in a way that I would never love it myself. To my great good fortune, I found her in Leslie, a very bright 30-something mother of 3 small children who was delighted to have challenging part-time work she could do in what little free time she had.
Leslie and I meet by phone or over coffee a few times a week. We brainstorm ideas. She keeps up with our social media feeds, does research, and more. Little by little, we are letting people know about our site and encouraging them to visit.
Keep learning!
I haven’t stopped learning – I hope never to stop. Learning is what keeps me alert and engaged in the world around me.
I try to spend time on social media every day, and I continue to seek out articles, newsletters and blog posts about social media marketing strategies.
But now that I have Leslie’s help with the day-to-day tasks, the planning, and the strategizing, I can focus on what I do best: writing.
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“The social media learning curve is more like a mountain.” – Janis Fisher Chan
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About our guest columnist
Janis Fisher Chan ran a training company that helped professionals, executives, academics, authors, content developers, bloggers, and others write clearly for specific audiences.
A passionate traveler, she recently launched Travel on the House, an informational web site with tips and advice for people who want to make travel affordable by swapping or rent out their homes.
Contributer : Blogging Bistro
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