I spend quite a bit of time on Twitter. I like the fact that I get instant alerts about blog posts or interesting articles from the people I follow. Despite the fact that Twitter is actually pretty awful at updating feeds (Andy Beard discovered that actually only about 20% of tweets ever seem to make it through to the people following you), it gives me a sense of sitting in a global office with a whole lot of other people who occasionally jump up and shout ‘hey, I have just found a great article’ or ‘just had a chicken sandwich for lunch and it was delicious’.
Twitter, however, is far from the only social media site I engage with. In fact, as tweeted the other day, if I spent an hour a day on each of the social media sites I try to be active on, I would have to be online for 28 hours a day. Not an easy feat to accomplish. When you put it into perspective like this, it makes you start to think about what it is all for. Shortly after this uncomfortable revelation, doshdosh (aka Maki – author of one of the best researched social media and internet marketing blogs out there) tweeted that social media is a tool, not a destination…
What are you doing it for?
It is easy to get caught up in the hype of social media, especially when every day a new site or a new community seems to appear. And even if social media isn’t your main business, but has been integrated as part of your marketing or PR strategy, just keeping up with it is a full time task. But the important thing is to stop and think about these two important questions at regular intervals:
1. What is the ultimate goal of what we are doing?
2. Is what we are doing leading us to that goal?
Your ultimate goal
There could be a multitude of reasons why you decided to integrate social media into your business or individual marketing and reputation strategy.
- To increase sales of your widget or widget service
- To build up your mailing list
- To increase your turnover
- To increase the number of fans who might buy your album, book or other work of art
- To build your visibility
- To reach as many people as you can with your message or expertise
- To make lots of friends
- To feel popular
- To get-rich-quick
- Because everyone else is doing it and you didn’t want to feel left out…
None of these reasons is the right one or wrong one – they are your reasons. But they are reasons. The best thing, if you haven’t already done it, is to write your goals down. Put time frames on them so that you can measure them. And refer back to them frequently.
I could have added the tautology ‘we’re involved in social media to get involved in social media’ but that would be labelling social media as a destination.
It’s time to be ruthless with your tools
It is important to take stock of these goals because if the tools aren’t working to get you to the goal, then it is time to change the tools. If you had to dig an enormous hole in a day and you were down on your hands and knees with a teaspoon, chances are you aren’t going to reach your goal. It is time to ditch the teaspoon and go and hire a backhoe.
Let’s take one of the goals – to increase sales of your widget.
Firstly, you will have identified what that increase should be – say you want to sell 12,000 widgets in 12 months. You know that for people to buy widgets, just going to your website isn’t enough – they need to go to your website with both the interest in widgets and trust that you are the ultimate widget maker. Now, are all the hours you are spending on Facebook reaching widget lovers? Would you be better spending your time on a widget discussion board? Granted, voting on and posting widget related topics in Mixx may raise your profile, but is it really working to get people to your website? Check your web stats. Find out what sites are driving the most traffic and whether that traffic is converting. Ultimately, your destination is 12,000 widgets by December 31st. A LinkedIn profile or a presence on Facebook is simply one means of getting you there.
That’s not to say it is all bad
Ultimately, social media is a lot of fun, and I would most definitely recommend retaining that fun element where you can. Like offline networking, you sometimes never know what may come out of an interaction. But always keep in mind what you want to achieve at the end of the day, which will help you to keep on track. I wouldn’t want to give up the sense of camaraderie and companionship I get from Twitter, but I do try to keep in the back of my mind what I am using it for, even if that purpose is simply the feeling of not being alone.
Thank you to Daniel Greene for the image
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Tags: Social Media, Twitter
