I woke up this morning thinking about how Social Networking is like gardening. You buy a house with some kind of space out the front or back, a yard, a “garden” but it’s not quite a garden yet. You stand and look at the space and imagine what you could create there. In your vision you consider styles, plants, flowers, what would be suited to the soil and the climate until you have a vision in your mind and perhaps on paper, of what you would like it to look like. You develop a plan and a list and off you go to the nearest Home Depot or nursery to buy what you need. After several hours (or days!) of labor, you start to see your vision of your garden coming together and you can step back in satisfaction knowing you did a great job!
But it doesn’t end there does it? You need to continually assess the state of the garden, feed and water the plants or they will die and your time will have been wasted. You need to commit to regular maintenance, pulling out the weeds, removing dead flowers and pruning to allow the plants to flourish.
Every now and then you get to sit back with a cold beer or lemonade and enjoy the fruits of your labor!
So how is this related to building your business through social media?
Deciding to use Social Networking as part of your marketing plan, whether you have regular business, an online business, network marketing, direct sales or other home based business, takes thoughtful consideration, planning and commitment.
Here are some actions steps you can take to get you going:
1. Create a Vision
How will Social Networking fit in with the rest of your marketing plan?
What do you hope to achieve by using social media marketing? More traffic to your websites? More clicks? More referrals, clients, business partners, sales?
The first step is to figure out what you hope to get out of your efforts and how to measure the results. If you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know your time is well spent?
2. Plan
How much time will you be able to devote to learning how to network socially and implement what you learn? If you intend to use Social Networking as a means to build your business, you had better know what and how to do it right or you risk your reputation! Be aware of the many mistakes people make which would be detrimental to your business.
Block out time to spend in Social Networking on a regular basis.
Set goals based on your vision and what you want to achieve.
Write the goals down (I shouldn’t have to tell you that!)
What gets measured gets done! Figure out which metrics you want to measure and keep track of them (number of followers/friends, number of blog posts or messages sent, traffic to website, number of new clients/sales etc).
3. Take action!
OK, now to implement your plan and start interacting with people, start a conversation, join in a discussion. Get to know people and work on building a relationship.
Stick to the times you planned and learn how to be both efficient and effective during that time.
Be consistent and continuously build your network.
4. Assess Your Progress
Continually examine how far you are progressing towards your goals and adjust as necessary.
Adjust your focus. What’s working? What’s not working? What do you need to start doing? What do you need to stop doing? What do you need to do more of or less of?
5. Maintenance
As with networking offline, Social Networking demands consistency in developing relationships. Without regular input, those relationships will wither and die and you will find your time wasted. Commit to frequent and regular interaction.
Stay up to date on Social Networking etiquette, trends and sites. This is such a popular and fast moving field, new applications are coming out every day to help you build your network bigger and faster. Be sure to spend some time checking out the latest Social Networking trends and choosing those that fit with your goals (NOTE: this does not necessarily mean the ones that seem the coolest or most popular…you could end up wasting your time.)
6. Reap the Rewards
With time and consistent effort, you will be able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor and the connections you have made which have impacted your business – but don’t be complacent, those relationships still need nurturing and the weeds need pulling!
Your business is no longer limited to being local; you can reach people around the world. Social Networking can provide a novel approach as part of your marketing plan but does required vision, planning and appropriate action in order to benefit your business and not waste your time. Stay tuned for more posts on how to use Social Networking to your advantage.
