A longtime subscriber wrote in and asked me, “Tim what are you doing writing about business planning, vision, philosophy and football? I thought you do that SEO and traffic thing?”
My answer sort of went like this:
Simply put…do you wish to serve your business or is your business going to serve you?
Business owners or their minions are jumping on Facebook, Twitter and other forums willy nilly posting away looking for the almighty dollar. And it is not going to ever come their way.
Why?
Their Bidness Ain’t Got No Soul!!
No personality. No human tones. It only sees green and people feel that target on them.
And in this world of transparency, anyone can sell the best vitamin, anyone can say they are a great lawyer or doctor or dentist. Anyone can say they are a great Realtor. In fact everyone is saying that! So to make it even worse they go onto the net with the same plan as they do everywhere else.Their so called unique message is:
“We rock they don’t, so buy from us.”
You have to pah-roove it!
Want the short course for success online? Prove your value up front. Some people call it the free line. Some transparency. Chris Anderson of Long Tail fame wrote a book about free. Informational marketers and direct response marketers have done this for years.
So instead of developing a “prove-it” plan have you also been guilty of jumping on every cool widget-gadget-gizmo that some propeller head wants you to try out? And it becomes addictive. We get Crack phones and Crackbook because you are sold on the idea it will make you money. Never really getting how. Distractions are easily tolerated when the plan is not based in true value.
If you have embraced QR codes and have not embraced writing every week for your business you are a “crack head!”
If your business is to serve you then your online activities should serve you also.
It should be ecological, holistic, and synergistic.
- holistic-emphasizing the organic or functional relation between parts and the whole
- ecological-interdependence of living organisms in an environment
- synergy:the working together of two things (muscles or drugs for example) to produce an effect greater than the sum of their individual effects
It must serve your values. It is social media so be social. People will buy you. Even if it is you the brand. If you do not discover your value system or philosophy, then you are going tactical without a plan.
This is why I have chunked up beyond any medium and just call it publishing. In fact, anything otherwise I have coined as a Content Crisis. If you embrace publishing you can take any or all of your pieces and redistribute it to the social media, your blog, article syndicators, etc. And that is how you can build your brand exponentially. And then it will seem like people see you everywhere.