Are you taking care of the basics? The stuff you know you should be doing, and that only rookies or arrogant suckers fail to do?

 

If you aren’t, you are going to see a slow slide, followed by a painful THUMP. Then you are faced with the daunting task of climbing right back up.

 

I can tell you because I’m there. Rubbing my business bum and wondering how in the world I let this happen.

 

For months, I had a comfortable client list. Each of my clients was pleasant and the work was challenging, but not stressful. A few referral jobs here and there filled in any gaps in my schedule, and I had plenty of time for lunches with friends and working out and all sorts of other good things. So I left “marketing” on my to-do list week after week, and didn’t think too much about it. Yes, I’m hanging my head in shame. Such a common mistake! Who hasn’t read (or written!) a post about the importance of marketing even when things are going great?

 

Of course, even with the greatest client list on the planet, you are going to have some attrition. Things change, people move, businesses close and life generally happens. And such was the case for me – all at once, of course, because of some law written by some guy named Murphy.  Now, I’m scrambling with no one to blame but myself.

 

It was easy to let marketing go for several reasons. I didn’t really want to be too busy through the summer. I wanted to make sure my existing clients were well-served and happy. I wanted to see if it would be possible to work by referral only.

 

Excuses. Lame excuses.

 

If you are running a business that involves attracting customers (and what business doesn’t?) you have to keep on marketing. If your business is big and successful your marketing activities might take the form of networking, maintaining your brand, or simply responding to emails. For the rest of us, marketing is probably a much longer list of activities.

 

Over the weekend, I wrote a new plan. This one includes a heavy dose of daily marketing – but also a few “built-in” ways to market so that later, when my roster is full again, it will be easier to stay in the marketing habit.

 

It is difficult to publicly admit to such a silly mistake, but really, everyone messes up. Make me feel better: share your common business errors. Have you let your accounting go for too long? Stopped marketing and paid the price? Failed to respond to an inquiry? Surely I’m not the only one feeling the sting of embarrassment! 

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The list of social sites that I use is getting long:

Twitter

Facebook

Google+

LinkedIn

Spotify

StumbleUpon

This Blog

SparkPeople                                                                                                                       * image by Patrick Hoesly

Goodreads

 

Believe it or not, each of those sites offers individual benefits, and I use them to meet different needs. If you were so fanatically impressed with my amazing writing skills that you wanted to connect with me in all of these different places, you would rarely, if ever, see the same content duplicated. I do provide links to my blog from several other sites, in the hopes more people will come here, but that’s about it.

 

You may be thinking, “That’s a LOT of content.” You’re right, it is, and sometimes I struggle with what to post where. Would this link work better on Twitter or Facebook? How many more people are likely to respond to this question on Google+ than on LinkedIn? Where should I share this in order to provide maximum exposure?

 

The thing is, I’m not really normal – in the way that I use social media. It is part of my job to offer my clients insight and advice regarding these various platforms. If that weren’t the case, I’m not sure I’d be active in quite so many places. Also, if I had a job that didn’t involve marketing or social media at all – if I were still a teacher, for instance – I would certainly be slower to get involved.

 

This run down of my own social media habits has a point: Any normal person would be overwhelmed.

 

That overwhelm usually leads to a handful of reactions. People link their feeds together so that the same status update or link or whatever appears everywhere at once. Sometimes, business owners simply ignore the latest and greatest and stubbornly stick to whatever has been working for them (know anyone still relying on the Yellow Pages?). Other folks just hire it all out to an agency.

 

Linking your profiles and pages together is a bad idea, for several reasons. One is that you miss out on the particular benefits each platform offers. The reason all these sites can coexist is that they don’t do the same things. The jokes and chatter that work perfectly on Twitter fall flat on LinkedIn.  I’m certainly not the first person to offer this advice, but I do think the temptation to link accounts will grow along with the number of platforms that could be linked.

 

Not taking the time to even learn how the next big thing works is a mistake, too. You need to at least have some idea of what each of these sites can do before you can decide where your business should be. Twitter might not be right for your business, but if you never check it out you will never know. Lots of businesses have found new customers through Twitter that never expected to be able to. Lots of others have tried and flopped – either because the people they were looking for weren’t there, they lacked an understanding of how that community works, or they were inconsistent or impatient.

 

Hiring an agency might seem like a good idea, especially if you listen to a well written and delivered pitch. But, unless you or someone who is extremely knowledgeable about your company works closely with the agency, it could be a disaster. In order for marketing through social platforms to work, you have to be personable and responsive to what your customers want. A representative from an agency cannot do that nearly as well as someone who lives and breaths your business. I’m not saying that an agency is NEVER the right idea, but you (or someone you trust) will have to spend time making sure the agency knows your company well enough to represent it.

 

I’m curious as to how the people who read this blog handle the overload. Do you wait to see how everyone else is going to use the latest new thing, or do you jump right in? Do you link your profiles together? Do you use different platforms to share different sorts of information or is one place as good as another?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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When I was teaching, we went on professional development retreats each year. These events weren’t lavish or luxurious, but we did go to a hotel in a park in a beautiful setting and have professional speakers come talk to us about various topics. It

meant a weekend away from home, at the very end of summer, and I hated them.

 

I hated leaving my family for a weekend. I hated having to be my professional self (I always called “teacher dava” Mrs. Stewart and thought of her as an entirely different person that “regular dava”) for a whole weekend. I hated the idea of how much such a retreat must have cost, especially when compared to my annual salary.

 

But usually, the reality of the retreat wasn’t so bad. The speakers were always interesting and it was good to get excited about getting back in the classroom. It was useful to learn more about my profession. Getting to know my co-workers a little better created better understanding and made working together a little more comfortable. It wasn’t so bad.

 

The experience of having been a teacher helps me to be a better business owner. Just like I showed up on those retreats even though I didn’t want to, I sit down at my desk everyday and write for my clients, even when I don’t want to. It goes beyond simply having a good work ethic. One of the biggest complaints the teachers made about the retreat was that they felt the time would be better spent creating lesson plans or painting classrooms. Working wasn’t the problem. Showing up to do something we didn’t want to do was the problem.

 

There are parts of every job that are less fun or less interesting, but that still must be done. The odd thing is that we dread some of them so much, but then end up enjoying doing them. One task that writers often feel this way about is invoicing. Personally, I dread it and put it off until we are facing certain financial doom unless I do it, but then feel so happy and efficient when it’s done.

 

Today I am issuing a challenge: choose one task that you have absolutely been dreading – maybe some marketing, making a call you aren’t looking forward to, paying a bill, whatever – and do it. Then notice how you feel about it and let us know in the comments. (I’m going to feel like an idiot if no one does this so please, save me some embarrassment and make something up if you must.)

 

The task I was dreading? It was writing this post. I’ve been putting it off all week because writing here, in a personal way, as dava, is becoming increasingly difficult. Sometimes it feels like the more I write for others, the harder it is to identify my own voice and my own style. Now I feel better, though, just for showing up, even when I didn’t feel like it.

 

 

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Yesterday I was pleased to attend an event hosted by the Social Media Club of Chattanooga.  It was at my favorite coffee house and lots of friends were there, so it would’ve been fun regardless of presenters or speakers or whatever. However, it would be hard to describe watching a “live” (by Skype) interview with someone like Guy Kawasaki as a bonus.

 

The interviewer was John Martin of the Small Business Round Table, and he conducted the interview for his Internet radio show SBR with John Martin. Each week, John interviews small business owners, successful entrepreneurs and others who have wisdom to share with those of us working to build profitable businesses. John asked Guy questions about failure, venture capital and much more as we all looked on, listened and learned.

 

Guy Kawasaki is successful and excellent at what he does. He also seems to be a genuinely nice person who is interested in helping people, sharing his knowledge and teaching others how to be…enchanting. I think, though, that some of the things he said during the interview should be put into perspective.

 

For example, John asked about the way that Guy uses Twitter. Now, Guy has been scolded many times for posting too often, using a team to post under his name and other practices that some people view as “bad” or “wrong.” The thing is, it’s working. For Guy.

 

Guy has two accounts on Twitter, and if you follow both of them, you are probably seeing his name pop up quite frequently in your stream. He says that he posts each link that he wants to share four times a day – twice on each account. Now, if I re-posted things four times a day, people would get irritated really quickly. But Guy has something like 400,000 followers between his two accounts, and they are all online at different times. Some might check things in the mornings, others in the evenings – and that’s not to mention time zones. So, if you have 400,000 followers it makes good sense to share the same thing four times a day.

 

But if you don’t have that many followers? If you only have a measly couple of thousand? You are probably alienating people by repeating yourself so frequently, particularly if you are posting links to your own stuff (Guy doesn’t do that, by the way). Most of us can get by with posting something twice, but that’s about it.

 

Guy does something else that probably wouldn’t work for the rest of us: he uses social media like a billboard. He broadcasts on Twitter, which is why he wants tons of followers. For him, a follower is a set of eyeballs that might click on a link and look at an ad – and might even click on the ad.

 

He almost never retweets anything, mostly because he says he pays no attention to his stream. He is not using Twitter to engage in conversations. This works for a man who is hanging out on the NY Times Best Seller List, owns a couple of companies and is a respected authority in his field.

 

It probably wouldn’t work for you, and it definitely wouldn’t work for me.

 

Small business owners need to be having conversations on Twitter and Facebook. We need to be talking to people, and participating in useful discussions. You know, being authentically ourselves and stuff. For the business owner with a small reach and even smaller budget, real conversations with real people who spend real money are the power of social media. We can talk to people, make them love us, find out exactly what they need then sell it to them.

 

I would never presume to say that someone like Guy Kawasaki is doing it wrong. I will say that most of us cannot hope to do it the way he is and be successful. Do you follow Guy on Twitter or like him on Facebook? How do you feel about his tactics? Would you ever try to replicate his success using his tactics?

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Several months ago, I was at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast. The presenter asked the crowd how a business owner should go about pricing services besides looking at the prices of competitors. No one said anything, and since I’ve never even thought about what my competitors charge, I said, “Well, if someone agrees to pay what I ask without qualms, I raise the price just a little bit for the next person. If that person agrees, I raise it just a little bit more for the next person, and then just a liiiiittle bit more for the next one and so on. No one has argued with me about price yet…”

 

Everyone laughed – except the presenter, who said, “You’re all laughing, but she’s right. You just keep raising it until somebody says no. Then you tell them you made a small mistake in estimating, and quote them the price you quoted the last time.”

 

In other words, you keep going until you’ve gone one step too far, then you back up.

 

It worked well for me. I’m now confident that my services are well worth what I charge. It took quite a long time for me to feel I had reached a good, stable pricing structure, but approaching it slowly allowed me to gain confidence.

 

I do this with all kinds of things. We have pets. Lots of pets. Two birds, four dogs. We have also had frogs, pigs, cats, fish and lizards. It seems like there is always room for one more critter. Until there’s not. It’s obvious when we have gone one step too far with our menagerie, but not quite so easy to back up.

 

A couple of days ago, I went for a run first thing in the morning. It was HOT. Since I haven’t been running regularly for a while, I kept having to walk for a few steps, then run some more. I kept doing this until I could feel my hamstrings shaking. Several hours later, the evil heat exhaustion headache made its ugly appearance. One step too far.

 

Taking things just a little too far is a good way to find your boundaries, so that you can push them. It is probably the best growth strategy for cautious people because you are constantly testing the waters and rarely diving in. There’s not much danger involved because you go forward about an inch at a time, and it’s perfect for people who like to take small steps.

 

There are dangers, of course, and alternative methods of progression. Peter Shallard wrote a great post about the difference in the tortoise and the phoenix methods of transformation. Peter recommends getting comfortable with both types of change, and makes good points in favor of that recommendation. It’s possible that, by pushing your boundaries slowly, you miss out on opportunities. There’s no telling how much money I “left on the table” in those early months of business.

 

It’s not a good strategy to use in relationships. You generally don’t want to go a step too far with people. Sometimes it’s not possible to back up.

 

Do you ever purposely go a step too far to see what will happen? How do you handle it when you have to back up?

 

 

 

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