Social Media: How’s your cake coming along?

Companies considering a social media campaign but with no past experience will quickly find  huge numbers of self-proclaimed social media experts offering “free” online training, webinars, etc. Most people curious about social media for their business will start by Googling, and then the flood-gates open!

A marketing generalist or business owner/manager looks at all the free info and thinks “How hard can this be? Looks like I can do this myself – I don’t need any capital or operations budget, IT support, extra staff, etc.” Of course, a lot of time gets wasted on the way to the inevitable sales pitches hiding behind the noise level, but a few good tips along the way can create false confidence.

People who DO dive in themselves are often “slightly informed amateurs” who end up doing it wrong, spending too much time doing it inefficiently, or have unrealistic expectations. Worse still, the only person they can hold accountable for the results is themselves – those online gurus they learned from are long gone and have no vested interest in your success – nor did they ever know anything about YOUR business or local market when they gave their “one size fits all” online advice.

You can’t bake a cake by looking at 10 different recipes (or partial recipes) and picking/choosing ingredients, oven temperature and baking time. If you’re really serious about cakes but can’t devote your life to becoming a baker, you’ll buy from a good baker so you can keep focused on what you’re best at.

Considering running your own social media marketing campaign but don’t have a dedicated social media expert(s) on staff? Ask yourself this question:  “If I want to run an ongoing magazine or TV ad campaign to increase business, would I use an ad agency or marketing production firm or would I do EVERYTHING in-house?” Most will say in one form or another “We don’t have the professional tools, expertise and contacts they have, nor the time to do it quickly and effectively”.

Exactly.

”All the world is a birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much”

– George Harrison