Social Media Marketing is All about FOCUS!

Welcome to another edition of social business unplugged, practical advice on how to leverage social media for your business. Now, the host of social business unplugged, author of the forthcoming book, maximize your social published by Wiley and founder of windmill networking. Neal Schaffer. Greetings, everybody, Neal Schaffer again, and welcome to another episode of social business unplugged. It's not like I travel on business every week. But this time I am in Santa Clara, California, where I'm actually doing my own internal r&d. I think that anybody that is active in social media, anybody that's active in business has a need for their own internal r&d to stay ahead of their game, to network with other people, and to learn auxilary skills that can help them succeed in business and in life. So I'm actually up here at something called the Experts Academy, something put on by a gentleman named Brendon Burchard. And amazing already met people that I knew from Orange County, as well as others that are active in social media and doing amazing things. And Brandon is an amazing speaker. In fact, one of the most amazing speakers I've ever seen, he's written a few books, The Millionaire Messenger and what have you. But this podcast is not about him. But it's about an important concept that he brought up that I think is important as well in how your business is leveraging social media. And it really comes down to one word, focus, there are so many things that your business or you yourself, probably want to achieve through social media, so many things you want to talk about so many platforms you want to be on, and I face the same issue, I have a lot of little projects that I like to launch. And those of you who know me, well know that I probably have 10 or 20 projects that at any moment I'd like to go full steam ahead on. The problem is, the less focus you have in social media, it truly comes down to the less you get done, right. So focus in social means a few things. Number one, when we talk about creating that social media strategy, what is going to be the focus in terms of your objective, what is your primary objective, every company and if you're a large enterprise, we have 10 different departments, that each are implementing social media as part of a social business, it's one story. But if you're a smaller business, or you're in social media for a number of different reasons, and you want to know how you can do better, it often comes down to focusing on doing one thing, right. And I find this as a problem that most company and most people and even myself fall prey to at times. So it's picking that one objective, and then maybe it's picking that one platform. And maybe if you blog, it's picking that one subject matter. And I like to talk about when creating a social media strategy, the need to create an anchor, okay? An anchor has many, many different components to it, an anchor can mean a competitor, that is going to be used to generate your baseline metrics for your own ROI. And to see how effective your organization is in social media. It can also be your anchor content, your anchor objective, that primary thing that is going to drive your company's success in social. We've heard so many people say, Look, you don't need to be on all the platforms. I'm in full agreement. I know people that have unplugged from Facebook and Twitter and Google Plus people that have unplugged from Pinterest, and that are on Instagram. And there's no one right way to do it. It all comes down to not only where you want to build a community, but what you want to build a community around. Because obviously, certain platforms are better for certain things like visuals than other platforms that are better for conversations, for instance, or deeper discussions that we might have in a platform like Google Plus, or even a LinkedIn group. So by focusing on doing one thing, well, we can ensure that we begin to implement something. And that's the failure. I see so many people make and so many businesses make, whether it's for the professional use of social media, or the business use is not doing anything, is reading blog posts, maybe listening to podcasts like these or reading women on networking spot blog posts, or buying books or attending webinars. If you don't implement, it's good for nothing. And instead of implementing everything, just start with one thing, take baby steps. You'll thank me afterwards because what happens is that sometimes we're afraid to move forward, we're afraid that we're gonna say the wrong thing. We're afraid that we're too late. We're afraid that we're going to have nothing to say, Look, your business, you as a person have been successful, because you have something that nobody else has, right. And social media is just an extension of that. It's an extension of sharing that of conversing with others of finding useful information, finding people that can help your organization or You can collaborate with, it's really no different than life in general, and meeting people like I did today at this Experts Academy. So I really want you to think hard. And if you feel like you're spinning a lot of wheels, spin a lot of cycles and not getting a lot accomplished not seeing the ROI. I want you to take some withdrawals, I want you to withdrawal from maybe one platform. Or maybe if you're curating or blogging on different types of content, get back to your anchor content. My own blog, women on networking began as a wordpress.com blog that I actually launched on LinkedIn. LinkedIn used to have these applications. One was the WordPress application. I actually launched it on LinkedIn in July of 2008. Right. And until I finished my first book, women that were keen understanding, leveraging and maximizing LinkedIn, I finished the rough draft of that in March of 2009, didn't publish till September. But it was really, you know, after I finished it, it's like, you know, there's more to social media than just LinkedIn. And that's when I began blogging, I think it was April 2009, on different topics. And this has evolved to the point where my next book, maximize your social is on all the platforms, right? I never wanted to be a one trick pony. And everybody that knows me, has heard me say that before, because businesses need help on all the platforms, you don't pick a platform, you align your strategy with a platform based on your objectives, right. So for me, that was important to blog about other things. But you know what? LinkedIn is still the anchor content of my blog, I know if I have nothing to blog about that, if I come back to LinkedIn, I know that I already have a community for that I have an audience for it, I in fact, I have in Google's eyes, I have credibility for it. Because I've been blogging about it so long, I want each of you to build that same authority, by sticking to one topic. It's like with SEO, if all of a sudden you start blogging about five completely different topics, it's hard for Google to figure out what your blog is about. And guess what it's hard for people to figure out what you're about as well, or other businesses. So staying with the focus, staying crystal clear on the audience, on the platforms, the content on the objective is sort of an evergreen thing that you're always going to need to do. And perhaps, if we can compare it to Steve Jobs, who may rest in peace, who said that every morning, he would look at himself in the mirror and say, Do I really love what I'm doing? What can I be doing better? And what have you really give yourself the same sanity check every day, go back to that objective in your strategy. Go back to that focus that maybe you decide on right now after listening to this podcast, and try your best to stick around. And now if you have the focus, and you're doing really well, well, it's time to extend upon that, right. It's time to branch out maybe into different platforms and different subjects. But the problem is that most companies and people start the opposite way by spreading themselves way too far without that initial focus. I hope this podcast has been useful. I appreciate your comments, your requests and your ratings on iTunes. That's it, everybody. Thanks. Make it a great day. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to another edition of social business unplugged. We appreciate your subscribing to our podcast. Please help us spread the word by sharing it on social media or adding your rating and comments in iTunes. If you would like to appear on the podcast or have content that you would like covered, please contact Neal Schaffer Neal at windmill networking.com. Also please subscribe to the windmill networking blog on social media strategy at windmill networking.com Thanks again and make it a great day.