Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Here briefly are the stages of building a profitable and satisfying business.  If you are not yet at stage four, you could be wasting your time cultivating your on-line presence.

Stage One – Know Who You Are

Do you know what it is you do and who you serve?

Without a unique point of view, a clear focus, a personal brand, your on-line time can quickly deteriorate into time wasting chit chat. (Posted any pictures of puppies lately?)  Keeping in touch with old friends is valuable and has its place but it is not business leadership.  If you are not clear about what you are selling and who you are selling it to, your on-line time could be better spent off-line clarifying your unique business idea.

 In the big picture, time spent finding that thing that you are most uniquely qualified to create and share with a willing and appreciative public is far more valuable than the number of comments received on your most recent post.

You can download free worksheets to help you clarify your vision and mission from my web site,

Stage Two – Find Paying Customers

Are you making money now from your business?  If the answer is, “No, not really”, there is no reason to feel ashamed, all businesses start somewhere.  You may be in a necessary startup phase or you may be blogging, tweeting and commenting in order to hide from the hard work of generating real life leads.  (I am not judging.  I am an introvert too.) If you are not yet making money, stop socializing online and consider some other way to make contact with your ideal customer.

Stage Three – Expand Your Product Offerings

Once you are clear on your business, your target market  and you are making money – enough money so that you know there is a demand for your product – you can begin to expand your product offerings with the intention of building an online revenue stream.

Stage Four – Build Your Online List

Okay now!

Now you have a plan and an intention behind your online efforts.  Now you have a process in place to nurture your online relationships.  Marketing and digital technology coach John Jantsch calls this “convergence”.  He says,

 “The highly converged business uses every advance in technology to open the opportunity for a deeper personal relationship.”

Building a strategy designed to create high engagement with your ideal client is a highly individual process. If you are already at stage four, I recommend you begin your social media marketing strategy with a careful consideration of your business plan and your mission.  You will be most effective when you focus your social media marketing efforts on building relationships based on your core business values and not on generating meaningless buzz over cute puppy pictures.

Image by Flickr user epSos.de, licensed under CC 2.0

Today I spoke with Jamie Gorman, President and CEO of  Sigma College of Small Business, about social media marketing and his strategy for leveraging his time and effort as he  maintains an  active on-line presence for his brick and mortar business.

Jamie runs a classroom based, business leadership school.  If you are managing a small business in Northern Virginia, you will want to check out the Sigma College Course Catalog.  Social media may be the new trend but no one should overlook the  tried and true value  in classroom based, face-to-face, peer-to-peer education.

Enjoy my return to podcasting and, please, feel free to comment.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:37 — 7.0MB)

I’ve dropped off the FaceBook map lately.  I check in now and again but my home page is crowded by the same avid posters. Mostly people I’ve never met whose Facebook mission seems to be to keep their face on my screen no matter what time of day I log in.

With good intentions of “contributing” I set out to post something on my wall.  But then I am confronted with quotes like “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” and I am struck dumb. 

Challenged to do something “beyond”, what am I supposed to post? 

 The truth is I am doggedly mastering the creation of my coaching business; spending my days creating content for my rocking new web site -which my Facebook friends can’t see yet because it takes time, and hard, uninteresting work to master something beyond myself. 

Should I post something more personal? I spent the weekend peeling the 15 year old wall paper off the walls of my guest bath. The newly bare walls are an accomplishment to be sure but not one of any universal value. 

I assume there are others who are working hard at creating something: a business, a well adjusted child, a better community, and beginning to find social media to be a chore.  For those who share my bewilderment, here is some advice for getting things under control. 

Not that I will have the opportunity to do the clean up any time soon but maybe you will.  If you do clean up your Facebook page, let me know and I will share with you how my guest bath renovation project is coming along.