This is my new philosophy on Social Media. I am taking a lighter approach these days; trying to sort out where I want to be in the next few months. I have been to a lot of homes and businesses in the last couple of weeks and have really noticed all of the different lights and patterns. Something as simple as light magnified in different shapes and colors really comes alive. I think the same principles are occurring on social media platforms.
Social media is evolving and people are trying to quickly classify platforms for specific people. These are some of the narrow pictures that are being presented. Obviously, cases stating the opposite can be made, but I wanted to highlight the phrases I hear the most.
“Facebook is for friends” – It is a great platform for families and friends to keep in touch with each other
“Twitter is for broadcasting” – Hasn’t changed much and people are only broadcasting messages there.
“Google Plus is for techies” – It is great for techies, but I have a business to run.
My take, on all of these opinions is listen, listen, listen. Don’t make hard, fast decisions about the direction you are going to take. We are in an evolving time and there are hundreds of agendas out there. Here are just a few.
PR and Social Media Companies – These people don’t want to learn another new platform like Google Plus so they are going to tell you that they are not putting their time in there just yet.
Social Media Experts – These people love new technology and often times jump from the hottest platform in order to be the “first” on the block to have a new eBook out. Yes – some companies already have Google Plus for Business ebooks on sale. Google Plus has not released business pages yet.
The Platforms are competing hard for users: Facebook has made several new changes with timelines, subscriptions and announcements about business promotions. Google Plus opened up registration to everyone and Twitter continues to watch from the sideline hoping people do not want all of the changes, (I guess, My opinion)
Here are some of the actions I am taking at this time. I think people should be listening and checking out the different changes going on.
Stay familiar with the changes occurring. Learn about the recent changes from Facebook. If your company is involved see if there is a way to use the changes to benefit your company presence.
Read some of the articles, but be careful of negative comments. Some people have been caught putting other people down regarding these different platforms. Try to read articles where people are integrating social media directly into their marketing efforts and finding success with it.
Keep your blogging active on all social media platforms. It is a great way to connect and measure your influence on these different platforms. Blogging is the best kept secret. If I would have followed the information from articles, I would have stopped a year ago. Now our company website gets hits from all kinds of subjects. Blogging is paying huge dividends.
Keep testing your key words and watch your analytics closely to determine where and how people are finding out about you and your information. You can easily track key words, platforms, locations and types of technology like ipads, smartphones, etc.
My advice, take the light approach for now. In this new world, change is a constant and you do not have to be an expert, you need to be a smart user. Google Plus will release company pages sometime and it will take time to see what the impact of that release is. No sense reading articles about it, since no one has seen it yet. Focus on things you can control and listen to the information being presented about these different platforms and see where it makes sense to spend your time.