November 13th, 2009
Climbing the Social Media Learning Curve
A torrent of comments lately from small business owners and entrepreneurs telling me how overwhelmed they feel when trying to learn how to use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to market their businesses.
Amen. It’s like one of those dreams where you’re running as fast as you can and suddenly realize you haven’t moved at all. Or reaching up to a high shelf and having everything fall on top of you.
Hang in there. Like anything else in life, effort in equals benefit out. All of a sudden when you least expect it, some of the pieces will start falling into place and you’ll realize that you actually know how to post something on Twitter that will be retweeted or how to link your blog posts to your Facebook fan page.
Here’s some advice from someone who’s done it the hard way:
1. Don’t try to conquer the entire social media universe all at once. Start with one application and get up close and personal with it — either Facebook or LinkedIn. Leave Twitter for later.
2. Look for great online how-tos. My recommendation is that you go immediately to Mashable.com. They have become my new BFF. All of their incredibly useful guides are free, are written in plain English, and actually work. There are others, too. You’d be surprised what typing “build facebook fan page” into Google will yield.
3. Don’t worry about making mistakes. The beauty of the digital world is that everything can be taken down. Everything can be corrected.
4. Hire someone to consult for a few hours or to take over your social media marketing for you. There are lots of reasonably priced solutions cropping-up.
Let me know what’s working for you. What advice do you have for all the small business owners out there who are learning how to use social media by trial and error?
