It seems these days social media is greatest thing since sliced bread…online marketers tout how Twitter and Facebook are not only useful, but a necessary component of your Internet presence.
In fact, social media can be deadly to your business and is over-hyped at best. Not that it’s useless, but too many seem to be relying on it for their online marketing these days. As I’ve said here, social media can be a wonderful tool but it shouldn’t be the focus of your efforts.
Focus on your website and take care of the only place that matters. A few minutes ago, I watched this video by Loren Feldman…he does use profanity and blunt language but if you have 15 minutes, I invite you to watch it.
At the end of the day, consistent blogging and content posting to your site will in due time develop a strong following…numbers of “friends” or visitors isn’t so important as the quality of those friends. Same is true in life – the number of friends you have isn’t a measure of the quality of those relationships.
But social media certainly isn’t dead or useless. Actually, blogging has improved since micro-blogging tools like Twitter didn’t exist five years ago. I can attest to this since many blogs I see these days are at least marginally professional and not senseless ramblings of someone looking for attention.
Now people just looking to share random thoughts about a hobby or whatever can put it on their Twitter or Facebook profile and get comments, sometimes in mere minutes, from friends, etc.
See the video, it’s quite the classic. Don’t be discouraged, building a following takes time. But in the end, the relationships will be much deeper than simply amassing thousands of friends on a social network.