Some years ago I talked about the concept of social media marketing, and why I think it’s a more important way to handle your business online rather than blatantly spamming all over the place. Today I’m talking about the difficulties in keeping up with it all, especially if you’re also trying to keep up with blogging as well.
Autographed; hanging in my favorite restaurant!
Do you believe that doing something so many times can help it become a habit? I have mixed emotions on that one. There are things I’ve done that have stuck, while other things I’ve done for a long time were good for that moment, but some months later, maybe even a year, it’s like I never did it to begin with.
Bad habits are an entirely different thing. Maybe it’s dessert you just can’t stay away from (me!) or something you enjoy drinking. Maybe it’s coming home, sitting on the couch in front of the TV and not moving again except to eat or go to the bathroom until it’s time to go to bed.
You know what that is? Comfort, plain and simple. Sometimes we get complacent and don’t do the things we need to be doing. Sometimes it’s because we have other things going on in our lives, while other times we get ourselves involved in something else that we like more and never give it a second thought.
Let’s equate that to blogging and social media marketing. It’s easy to do nothing at all; trust me on this one. However, if you’re in business, doing this means you’re not doing all you can to market your business. When you consider that it’s the easiest way to promote yourself as well as the most cost efficient long term, it makes no sense to not even try to give it some time and consideration.
Both of these things takes dedication, even if you can’t give it a lot of attention all the time. For instance, back in 2013-2014, I was on the road for 18 months, traveling between the northeast and the south on a somewhat regular basis. I found it difficult to keep up with all my obligations continuously. That’s why I shut down a business and a blog. This blog suffered some, as some of my traffic was declining on this blog and others. Yet another part of my business was going strong, and it paid more, thus the priorities changed.
Still, I haven’t abandoned blogging, and even though my focus has changed a lot over the past few years, and I don’t see my abandoning “most” of my blogs (I’ve kind of abandoned one blog, but turned it into a training site… not about blogging lol). I worked hard at sticking to a 2-post a week schedule while I was on the road; these days I don’t follow a schedule as much, but I continue putting out new or adjusted content.
Sharing articles on Facebook and LinkedIn (since I’m done with Twitter) helps to keep my name out there, and I’m working harder on that these days. It all helps, even if I have less time to get to it all. Dedication is always essential, even if you have to budget it and share the limited time with other things. If I ever find another social media site worth hanging out on, I’ll be sure to let you know about it.
Never forget to get your social media and blogging time in if you’re concentrating on promoting your business or your articles. Even if you only have 30 minutes a day, you can stay in the public eye and you might even get some benefit out of it. Would you be mad if that happened? No way! 🙂
Hi Mitch, I have a new blog that I really don’t use social media for. I’m going the SEO route. Even with my Inspire blog, I get way more from SEO than social. I think social media has become diluted with so many networks out there now and so many on the big ones like FB and LinkedIn. It’s not like the early days of social when you got more engagement, etc. as they didn’t have the pay-to-play algorithms that they have today.
Hi Lisa; I’m going to answer both of your comments here, answering the 2nd comment first. I noticed that the link to your blog is missing the “www” part, and I think that might be the issue. I did a test and before I went to hit “reply”, CommentLuv had given me the choices that I could select from (I tested it with the link to my business blog). Then I looked at comments from some previous commenters, and all of them also had the “www” in their link. I remember years ago when Andy was still doing it that a notice used to come up saying to add “www” or else CommentLuv wouldn’t work. Also, in your second comment, you forgot the C in “com” lol
Regarding your first comment, I agree that getting lots of comments like we did back in the day doesn’t happen much anymore, which is slightly depressing. Not having anything like Alexa anymore, you also don’t know how well your articles are boosting your site. It seems Google still hates me, but my titles are showing up first on both DuckDuckGo and Bing… I guess that’s something. In general, SEO doesn’t seem to like this blog at least (actually, Google doesn’t seem to like any of my blogs lol), but luckily I have a semblance of an audience by posting my articles and videos in my FB group (which I just remembered is a public group, so others see them here and there lol).
For some reason comment luv not working Mitch?
BTW Lisa, I rechecked the CommentLuv situation. It seems the error was your link missing the “https” part. Not sure if you ever saw my other response.
I believe that we form better habits through motivation and purpose, first. Repetition, second. And re-evaluation over time. Does this habit still serve a need? Or should I substitute a different habit? We brush our teeth on autopilot; the need is there as long as we have teeth. But do we need to wake at 6:00 AM every day, after retirement? Nope.
I’m trying to be more observant as to what triggers me to indulge in “bad habits.” What purpose is it serving? Am I really just that lazy or that self-indulgent? Am I being a little self-sabotaging? WHY?
But what is so wrong with being comfortable? Is it keeping you from accomplishing more important goals? Is it damaging your health? How can you make a small change to be both comfortable and healthy? Doesn’t have to be all or nothing, or either-or.
It’s those mindless little habits that are purposeless, mindless, don’t serve us well (or actively sabotage us in achieving our goals) that we really need to shed. I think it’s okay, though, to be comfortable. Otherwise, what IS the goal?
As for the ROI on “blogging and social media marketing,” I’m not entirely convinced that it’s easy OR cost-effective for everyone. It can be, depending on the business. And for name recognition, reputation management, etc. you definitely need to be findable and you need to tell your own story. But is it bringing in as much business as you need for it to? Is it the best way to bring in business? Are you using it effectively for that?
I would urge people to keep good business records so they know exactly how their efforts are paying off. If you’re blogging for your business, you need to prioritize and focus on the activities that earn you money.
I enjoy blogging, and it gives readers a sense of how I write. (Every time I say this, it gives me pause and makes me think I really need to clean out the cupboards on my blog, because it’s not all “evergreen” and some posts are more thoughtfully crafted than others.) In that sense, blogging serves writers well – or it CAN. The same is true of artists and musicians and anyone else who can showcase their creative efforts online.
For others, it can inform clients and keep you savvy and involved in the latest social media trends and technology. It’s very easy to fall behind very fast, if you lose interest and stop paying attention.
Interestingly, I’ve liked the search results on my name better since deleting Twitter. And I’m not sure why – it’s not as if my tweets were showing up and I never tweeted anything I’d be ashamed of. It shouldn’t be different; I log out when I search so it shouldn’t be based on interests or activity, either.
I totally agree with you on motivation and purpose. Repetition; not so much. I debunked the thing about doing something 16 days in a row and it becomes a habit… I did something 65 straight days and it didn’t become a habit. Why not? Because I hated doing it from the beginning and I hated it at the end.
Truth be told, you’ve never actually blogged for business purposes. That’s definitely what my business blog is about, and it’s failed miserably, even if I’ve enjoyed writing it. I’ve gone back and forth on this blog over the years, trying different things and sometimes getting a little bit of business, but not often. I’ve never quite had the knack for true marketing since Panda… that totally threw me off my game, especially when they delisted me from Google Rank, if you remember that.
Once again, you’re totally correct in thinking it’s not easy to do, but for some businesses it can work easily enough. For instance, it works for my accountant’s site. I write her blog for her, and I also created her website. She runs a relatively small accounting business, yet she’s ranked in the top 5, often at #3, and it’s because I keep adding new content to her page while all the big boys are running stagnant. I also highlight that she’s not in the city but in the northern suburbs, and that’s where most of her clients are as well. So it can and does work, as long as you have competition that’s resting on their laurels a bit; I’m proud of how it’s worked for her.
As for Twitter… ick! lol
Hi Mitch,
Just dropping a line to let you know I really enjoyed this post and your reply on “repitition”. I enjoy your writing style. I also found social media to be a waste of time, just like business leads groups like the Chamber of Commerce or BMI. SEO is way more powerful, in my opinion. An hour or two a week blogging or reading/commenting adds up after a while. It’s never a waste of time. But I’ll never benefit from all those hours at leads group meetings. That was time wasted. I’m bookmarking your site for sure. Happy Holidays! PS: Any feedback on commentluv? Is it worth it to install it on our site? I just heard about it and know I’m seeing it everywhere!
Thanks for your comment Bryan; I totally appreciate it, and welcome to the blog!
I just let another Chamber membership lapse. I didn’t have anything to offer to the group, and I knew it wasn’t going to work out for me in the long run. I had experiences with BMI in the early 2000s, but I always went for free since their rule was members had to have someone sit in for them if they couldn’t make it. Totally a waste of time in my opinion, so we’re together on that front.
Here’s the thing about SEO and blogs. It can work out well, but you have to make sure you do a lot of other things with it. For instance, I just found out that for whatever reason Google stopped indexing all of my blogs; that means the best SEO wasn’t doing anything at all. Being on Bing and DuckDuckGo is nice, but without using Google properly your blog or website isn’t going anywhere. Thing is, I know my business site used to be indexed because for years, and my two major search terms are still in the top 5 after about 18 years, but my blog posts weren’t being indexed, which hurts me just a little. That’s something to think about.
As for CommentLuv… well, long term users and bloggers love it, but I’m not sure how new bloggers or business people who comment feel about it… not that they hate it, but they probably don’t pay attention to it. It doesn’t cost anything to use it, and if you build up an audience I think it could work wonders.
In a perfect world, I would have continued to pursue every marketing effort I’ve started, but I’ve found this is certainly not achievable! Important to be kind to ourselves and move on when needed. Seems we throw everything we can at different marketing styles and concepts, see what sticks, and run with the efforts that are working best! Glad you’ve been able to focus on what gives you the most return over the years.
Hi Christian. Truth, we can’t always stick to the exact same type of marketing when it’s not bringing us closer to what we’re trying to achieve. I stuck with Twitter marketing for years, even when it wasn’t overly beneficial, because I could pre-post items that went live when I wanted them to, and because I had a few folks who’d almost always retweet my content; it always helps to have people like that. 🙂 Otherwise, it works better to try doing the things that will give us long term promotion and, hopefully, a few clients along the way.