I have an ongoing discussion (battle?) with one of my peers about the merits of all of these social media things, and whether his generation needs to even get a grasp on it from a business standpoint. (He’s a Baby Boomer btw.)
My counter is that such a stance is a bit short-sighted, and that frankly, if you can make the new tools work for you, they’re actually far better than the old ones. It’s not just about playing with new toys, which is an opinion I see people hold onto at times.
I have a rule about not writing something if someone else already did it better, so take a look at this article from Seth Godin.
Here’s an important excerpt:
Consider the local real estate agent. She can spend to run ads every week in the local paper, or she can use the same money to start a legitimate media channel, a digital magazine, say, one that cheers on the school and gives the local paper a run for its money. And oh yes, the only houses listed for sale are hers. It might take a lot of work and even some money. But what does she get? A platform forever.
Basically, you run an ad in the paper or on TV, and x number of people are going to see it – most of whom are not even your potential customer.
Build yourself a community and network based around your product and every “ad” – whether that be promo, conversation, or otherwise – is hitting your exact target.
The sheer number of people who see it may not be the same, but if every single person who does see it is your customer base…
Doesn’t that make way more sense? The problem most people stuck in the old method have is they can’t quite grasp onto the part where “building the network” isn’t immediately measurable in terms of return on investment.
There’s really no way around that other than accepting it.
(This doesn’t mean you can’t see sales or new customers right away – just as a rule – and certainly as far as seeing measurable analytics – a wider and more established network is going to give you much more.)
