My experience with social media began with LinkedIn. It was a good fit for my early objectives, to round out a kind of “online resume” and reach the business community with my services at the time (I was 15 years in as a print advertising sales rep for newspapers and magazines).  My experience with social media today is primarily to build a business I really enjoy and for changing my life into something I want it to be. I like the path I finally found, one that doesn’t force me to eat, sleep and breath marketing.

Today, my little Attic has become my career.  Social media COMBINED with Internet marketing is growing this little operation slowly but surely.  I spent quite a lot of money, about $30 or $40 at a time, on the premise of FREE advertising with social media over the past year or so.  An appealing concept since I had no money to invest and because as a marketing experiment, I wanted to see if it could be done – build a business without spending money on advertising. It can, but I goofed in wasting a lot of money on these confounded classes and seminars that could technically be considered advertising since that was what I was trying to do from them.  Now I look for programs where I can learn all I want for free and only pay for things that will pay for themselves ~ win, win propositions.  I have learned many things the hard way concerning social media and online marketing.  Here is the list:

1. A giant following on social media channels, a best-selling book and a lot of useful tips does not = social media expert for businesses. More likely the expertise is at making a profit by selling a book, education program or related social media tool. All fine if you understand that up front but I don’t find many of them mentioning this.  Look for very specific, defined outcomes when you’re asked to pay a fee. For example: “Social Media for Business” is very broad and general, but “How to Grow a Facebook Page for Business” is much more realistic and much easier to assess whether you are gaining something valuable.  The truth is you can learn most of these things online, for free, then invest your money in the TOOLS and SERVICES that actually build something tangible once you understand what you need. An hour or two here and there spent at random events won’t buy you much more than a very broad overview so skip them if you’re already past the beginner stages of understanding how great social media is and setting up your accounts.
2. Social media is just a tool, not a whole marketing plan. A much more intricate strategy is involved in using it to actually make money for most businesses and boy was I surprised at what ended up working…read on.
3. Social media works vastly different than traditional media. Building an audience here isn’t the same as getting people to call you or buy something from you, there is a much bigger objective and if you miss it you will waste a lot of time and money.  Taking the time to learn this has been well worth the time and effort and it is a different message than I hear coming out of most of the well known social media “experts”.
4. Social media serves best as part of an Internet marketing plan aimed at building traffic to a website. Building a selling channel on a social media platform might be nice to have later, but I’d better focus on making sales directly from my website first if I want to stay in business.  When I have the budget for it I can buy those extras since they will undoubtedly contribute to the overall strategy. Spend your time, money and effort in learning how people shop online before you tackle social media in a serious effort.
5. Social media is going to cost me – either time or money. At first it was a lot of both as I struggled to see how it works for an actual retail operation. I wasted a lot of money, one small fee at a time, going to one seminar, chat, discussion and roundtable after the next trying to figure this out only to find I’d learned what was being offered on my own by spending time with it – we all can… I still haven’t heard one “social media expert” do a good job of laying this out.  In many cases (not all) I believe it is because they haven’t seen this yet themselves.
6. When you are a one-horse operation, looking to strike out on your own, the investment is a lot of time. You can’t afford the expense to build it the right way by paying someone; not yet. You can only start folding in services that factor into a much larger plan.  For instance, someone to build your Facebook page or someone to populate your Twitter feed and grow a targeted following for you, someone to set up a blog and/or website for you etc.  You will have an active roll until you have more revenue (then you can start handing out roles to staff or an outside firm). Established businesses are in a much better position to start outsourcing once they understand the full strategy behind online marketing.
7. Take the time to learn.  Don’t run off half-cocked desperately trying to build a mass of followers thinking that’s all you need to get sales. Having a large audience is different from making sales.  I’ve talked to several people now who have great networks and quickly built a gigantic following in social media only to find they just aren’t making any sales.  The flip side, my little engine that could has a very small social media following but my sales are steadily going up (and so is my social media following).
8. Converting visitors to customers is a short or long process depending on how the visitors find you. If my visitors found my site because I met them at a business function and invited them to connect in social media they usually don’t become buyers and often never engage in much of the content.  If I find them through the content on my website, which brings them there because they are interested in what I have on the site I usually get a sale at some point. Does this mean I don’t want my friends and family coming to my website or joining me in social media? No. But it also means I’m not expecting my business growth from this avenue (hint: this is the avenue most are using to build their audiences online – business and personal networks and why most aren’t seeing much profit from it).
9. Myth: A big social media audience means I’ll get more business. I thought this must be so because traditional marketing dictates this logic…more people = more sales.  While having a big audience certainly won’t hurt, it is much more CRUCIAL that the audience be a very particular kind of audience if you hope to increase sales.  For some businesses this is easy but for most it isn’t easy at all. Content comes first, then the audience develops around that content.  If you have a lot of money to invest in paying to have the content built quickly things will happen faster, otherwise – slow and steady wins the race.
10. Build a plan around getting traffic to your website. Don’t set out just to create multiple marketing channels ~ synchronize them to increase the strength of your primary outlet – your website/blog. I run my little store on a blog platform, WordPress, and it costs about $25 upfront to get started, more if you have to hire a programmer but you can get a basic blog up for this $25 and pay for more as time goes.  If you’re on a shoestring budget you are in good company, I started with just an idea, maybe $100 – $200 all told when I count up the nickels and dimes, and have used sales from the store to pay for advancements and the education I refer to in this article.  It is why my site isn’t all that fancy, and I’ve found it doesn’t have to be.

My primary vocation in life has become my little website, hatched half as a lark three years ago and centered on things I enjoy doing.  I would love to hear your ideas that have worked. It’s tough out here for everyone these days ~ pooling resources is a great way to go and we all stay afloat!

As a general rule, we’re all attending a networking event to promote our products and services and there is an understanding that this kind of talk is to be expected.  How can we engage without seeming self-centered? Master this in real life and the online content building efforts start to get easier since that is the primary concept behind inbound marketing, the strategy for using social media and the Internet for generating business.

Do you sometimes get back to the office after such an event and find an email trumpeting all the great things that can be bought  or recommended to others but not a word about any other benefit for knowing the sender of the email?  Are you tossing a lot of cards you collected into the garbage because you don’t think any of the people are a good prospect for your product?  I believe this is a holdover from our earlier marketing days of interrupt marketing.   The problem comes in when there is no offer to provide help and value first, without the requirement of a purchase.  We also miss some great opportunities to help each other when all we’re focused on is the direct step of making a sale or gaining a prospect.

We can all offer to help each other.  In the social media realm this is especially true.  We can easily share each other’s online content provided it is good content.  Many traditional businesses who either haven’t started  serious efforts to market online or haven’t explored the tremendous differences at work in marketing here are shooting themselves in the foot by ignoring the chance to share someone else’s content.  It is also important to note the different types of connections being formed in online communities (see The Size Surprise, an article that discusses how some social media audiences can be quite large but not very productive for the business, while a small audience can be of tremendous benefit if they are engaging in the content).  Without acknowledging these differences, we miss opportunities.

Many aren’t engaged in social media at all and are still just sending emails to everyone they’ve met explaining all about how wonderful their product or service is without one word about how they can help the person on the receiving end of the message beyond buying or using the offered product.

Networking events can be a great opportunity for promoting the valuable content you’re creating and for building your social media communities.  Explain what you do and communicate the value of visiting your online content.  Send that follow up email and recap the resources you offer, providing the links.  Offer to help the other person share their online content.   This doesn’t mean you must connect necessarily, sometimes it won’t make sense to connect but you can still offer to share each other’s content across your networks to make it available to others.  This also helps you since you’re providing useful content to your audience.  Everyone wins!

In my last article I talked about the Size Surprise.  The shock some receive when it turns out to be really difficult to build an audience online or to realize any boost in business from a large audience that was created from personal connections to the business owner rather than the actual product or service being offered.

The reality is starting a business in any circumstance is just plain hard work.  Most of the time, even the overnight successes turn out to not be such overnight successes when the whole story comes to light.   It is particularly hard for the army of one. Starting with an idea, some passion and a lot of willingness to work ridiculously long hours to make something happen all by yourself.

The good news is social media, the Internet, email and a multitude of other tools and services make bootstrapping your way to a new source of income more accessible than it has ever been.  It just calls for learning and applying strategy.

Simply hopping online, creating a presence in a few social media channels and plugging in messages about your business won’t have the desired outcome.  Marketing online is much different than running an ad in the local paper, buying a TV spot or advertising on the radio.  Instead of thinking about reaching masses of people and repeating over and over in a variety of ways what you do, why it’s great and how much it costs you now have to think about letting the business truly come to you.

You are trying to build a “hub” on the web.  A place where all paths related to the products and services you offer just happen to conveniently intersect.  This is the subject of my entire blog here at How2MarketingAdvice, Inbound Marketing.  It is the strategy for marketing a business online and you can learn every facet of it right here and without having to pay a fee to have access to the content.  The posts are not hooks to make you buy something.

Once you master the strategy of how to use the Internet and social media as tools for building a business, it will start to grow and you will find it is no longer practical for you to sit at the computer building all of the content that goes into this strategy and you will be looking for ways to outsource the task.  That is when I hope you will turn to me for help to make things more efficient and profitable but you certainly don’t have to – you can learn it all right here at no charge and never spend a dime.

It’s tough being an army of one. Many won’t take you seriously and you will often find yourself obsessing about the outward appearance of things. In navigating this course myself I’ve learned to tune things out that don’t contribute to my goals.  When you’re on your own you must stay focused and become very disciplined.  Some kind of big picture should be lingering out ahead of you but it is not important to write it down or spend hours plugging in the details.  You can’t formulate a detailed plan when you’re bootstrapping it. The details are not yet available since there are too many variables in play.

So, relax, and take some advice from Cesar Milan (the Dog Whisperer, I LOVE his show) and do what he says the dogs do, live in the moment. Concentrate on what you have and what you can do right now. Set aside the things that don’t work or aren’t available to you right now and don’t get caught up in appearances.  Not everyone has been in our shoes and not everyone understands that it really is possible to start a business this way so sometimes there will be criticism or the occasional lecture from well-intentioned people prepared to explain why this cannot possibly work.  The self-doubt monster will stalk your every move.  If you’re going to fail, fail in the field and not in your mind.

I ask that you subscribe to my email list, join my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter.  I am sharing a lot of information through these channels (with some content that is exclusive to each channel) aimed at helping people learn the steps of inbound marketing.  During this week I’ll be adding an education page filled with information and resources for all who cares to spend the time learning exactly how to build a strong marketing strategy, even when they have little or no money to invest in it. Time will be the investment. Luckily it’s what most of us find we have in abundance when there is a job loss in the picture.

The shock most people receive is at how hard it is to build an audience when others seem to effortlessly develop a huge following in one or more social media neighborhoods.  Why is it that some seem to find instant success in attracting an audience while others struggle?

Several factors are at work in building an online audience.  Businesses and business people who have always been aggressive at networking will sometimes have a large audience fairly quickly since they can leverage that network to get the word out about their presence online.  This will not necessarily translate into sales or even increased business since the reason for the audience is not due to the products and services as much as it is the relationship with the business owner. Although the audience may be very large, the conversion rates can still be quite low in this setting. It really hinges on whether or not the audience is truly engaged with the content being generated.

In building an audience online, it is much more important to attract people who are there for a genuine interest in what your business has to offer.  The reality is this will take a considerable amount of time.  It’s kind of like the courtship phase of a romance, some take longer than others to fully materialize.

Many give up on Social Media as a marketing tool when they don’t see the magic happening right away.  We’ve all heard about the monster success stories out here and for some of us this has become the benchmark.  The reality is the average business Facebook page has fewer than 5,000 members.  Sometimes a gigantic Facebook or Twitter following is there but the sales aren’t because of the type of content generated by the page.  Fun and popular might not get the bills paid when it comes to translating audience size to actual generation of business.

Does this mean the effort should be abandoned if the sales or the audience just aren’t there?  As a marketing strategy consulting professional, I would offer an emphatic no since this is more the norm.  Using tools like Facebook and Twitter to generate business is a process.  As I’ve said over and over throughout my career in selling advertising services, there is no one-size-fits-all formula.  Each business is unique and will have to craft a unique formula for promoting its goods and services.

The size of your online audience is affected by numerous factors. Here is a list of questions to consider:

• Is your brand already soundly established?
• Do you know a lot of people that you can immediately connect with online?
• Can you advertise your presence online with PPC ad campaigns in various channels?
• How much time can you invest in promoting your online presence right now in relationship to just getting your work done?
• Are you already affiliated with a large, well known company or brand that will offer instant recognition and credibility?
• Is your existing network filled with people who carry a lot of social media influence themselves?
• Is your target demographic here yet? Click here for a look at some statistics.
• Are you moving into new territory, trying something new and different?

Some take the approach of capitalizing on every opportunity to create a large online presence thinking this is the path to instant success.  The reality is, even with a very large audience, it may not impact the bottom line much if the audience is there for some reason other than the organic merits of the brand, service or product.

If your business is very small or your resources very limited in terms of how aggressively you can develop the online resources needed to build your audience, understand it will likely take some time to actually generate revenue from an inbound marketing strategy.  It takes quite awhile to build but the beauty of it is once the momentum reaches a certain level much less effort will be needed to keep it going.  If you set things up correctly, your efforts should be cumulative.  The actual work your doing today is often merely a building block.

Sometimes, less is more.  The goal, ultimately, is some type of conversion that results in more business.  Operate on a win win philosophy and you will find that your conversion rates are higher and the need for a giant audience just isn’t there.  When you truly seek to help other people with your time and talent they will naturally seek you out when they need your services.  If your goal turns into making the audience bigger instead of investing in content that offers value you may find your efforts are wasted.

Resources you might find helpful:

• The value of a Facebook “fan” in cold hard cash.
• 11 Good reasons to have a Facebook Page for your company.
• Measuring the Value of Social Media
• Size doesn’t prove influence on Twitter

~Lisa Isbell, Marketing Strategy Consulting, Inbound Marketing Professional

But, be careful how you go about doing it.  A popular practice and one being recommended by many social media gurus and experts (in my opinion there are no experts – just varying degrees of experienced users of the tools) is to create a fanpage with something other than your business name or brand at its center.  Here is why that is no longer a good idea.

I read an article on this topic, removal of fanpages, recently and suggest you read it when you’re finished here.  Facebook can remove your page if you aren’t careful in how you name it and it centers around recently updated terms of service.

I’ve created a brief video highlighting what you need to pay attention to in creating and naming your facebook page, and why – pointing out the specific items in the new terms of service that could get you into trouble if you ignore this piece of advice.

I welcome your thoughts and comments on this topic.  Social media tools change almost daily and I don’t pretend to have all the answers but if you follow a sound inbound marketing strategy and apply these tools you will find a lasting success that isn’t as vulnerable to the constant changes.

Subscribe to my periodic updates by sharing your email address with the form on this page.  I do not share my list with anyone and do not send out frequent messages – usually monthly or less.

Watch my video about naming your facebook fanpage:

I started my own online business almost 3 years ago.  Employed as an advertising account executive in the print industry at the time, I had my own ideas about how marketing is done.  It all centered around the interrupt model of marketing.  That is, getting messages out there in a setting where someone is doing something else, interrupting them with a marketing message of some type – in my case, print ads that are placed between the pages of engaging written content – and hoping to snag someone’s attention and get them to either buy something or at least make a mental note of the company brand.

My first lesson was that the Internet doesn’t quite work the same way…to an extent you can still use some of this kind of thinking but overall a pretty hefty mental shift will be required away from the older methods of constantly sending out commercial messages.  I also came along with my website a little after social media started to get a pretty good toe-hold.  In one way this was lucky, in another maybe not.

Lucky because I now don’t have just SEO (search engine optimization) as my only means of building substantial traffic to my site, not lucky in that if I’d started a lot earlier than I have I might not have had to work so hard to get a good standing in the search engines in the first place.  The times are a changin’ faster than I can type this.

Inbound marketing is a strategy with just 3 steps but each of those steps include a range of choices and a multitude of methods for implementing them that can lead to complexity beyond belief.  I got a hard lesson in each of those steps trying to market my little website on a bare minimum budget.  I permitted myself to spend no money other than what the store generates and my creativity, my own sweat equity.  I wanted to see if someone with nothing but passion and commitment could get somewhere with an online business.  The short answer is yes but you must be patient, committed and flexible.

I discovered Hubspot somewhere along the line.  They offer a great software tool for managing all of the intricacies of inbound marketing – kind of a dashboard solution for plugging in all the social media and other Internet tools that will be your unique inbound marketing formula.  I thought this was a great idea.  I also found out you can’t just pick this up and run with it.  A lot of education is involved, and I had a giant head start in coming from the marketing arena.  I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

As a result, I have tested through their resources and received certification as one who knows the ins and outs of marketing with social media, the Internet and all its resources better than most since most haven’t been immersed to this degree. As an added bonus I can counsel others in the use of the Hubspot software to manage the process.

There’s was not the only resource I used.  I also read and studied everything I could get my hands on that had to do with social media and Internet marketing for the past 3 years.  I know all about the mistakes, the paths that don’t work, the common misconceptions because I lived them, in fact, ate, slept and breathed them in every spare moment.  I’ve spent hours in a multitude of online courses both with Hubspot and other channels.  I can tell you for absolute certain, this is not something you will learn from a few free or low cost seminars. Those are only the starting points.

Lucky you…learn from my mistakes.  Just read my blog posts, I’ll be writing all about the little things I’ve discovered and how they are working out for me.  I have found that the single biggest obstacle to overcome is your own ideas about how this stuff should work.  For those just getting on this path, the hard lesson is coming, you just don’t know it yet.  I learned it the same way   It will not be something you learn in an afternoon or even several – this will require a commitment to a shift in thinking before it yields the best results.

Dig in…right here at this blog!

Lisa Isbell, Marketing Strategy Consulting, Inbound Marketing Professional

**NOTE: Sign up for the email updates and get more! Exclusive information, not published on my blog**

To put it in simple terms, there is a finite amount of space on the front page of Google for all search terms so, if you happen to be in the unfortunate position of having to compete with market level keywords then you could find yourself out in the cold if you’re trying to get somewhere with SEO.

As far as online marketing efforts go this used to mean a death sentence since this was pretty much the only meaningful route to getting good traffic to your web presence. These days we also have social media and recently we’re hearing Facebook is now a player in this arena, competing head to head with Google as the most visited website online.

Google does not share all the secrets it uses in determining how it ranks websites and they change the methods all the time so SEO can be tricky and expensive depending on how educated you are on the subject or how good a job you do in selecting your outsource partner.

In my view it is much too early to completely throw down SEO in favor of 100% social media efforts since you can still gain traffic from SEO practices and inbound marketing strategy is more about using multiple “neighborhoods” to generate traffic to your online content. I believe we should be doing all we can to participate in as many of these neighborhoods as possible.

Here are 5 SEO practices, now outdated, and their alternatives as inspired by a similar article in the May 2010 issue of Website Magazine:

1. Keyword stuffing: A now outdated practice, common in the late 90′s, of using keywords repeatedly and sometimes awkwardly, throughout the content on a web page. It was done because it used to be a fairly easy way to manipulate search rankings for the keyword. Google and other engines have grown considerably more savvy in how they rank sites and this practice just plain won’t work now – and worse, it can also get your site banned if you go too far with it.

Instead, create content that uses your relevant keywords naturally and sensibly. Also make sure the words are in logical places throughout your site like web page headers, subheaders, title tags and meta descriptions. If you are building your content for people and just pay a little attention to making sure you use the keywords where they fit logically you will serve your audience well and also benefit from SEO juice. Having an early strategy in place will serve you best – read the content here about inbound marketing to develop your method. (My own tip: use a blog if you’re small and working on your own, it is much more SEO friendly and you can achieve some of these tasks just by smartly writing your articles – no web programmer needed)

2. Blog Comment Spamming: I can’t tell you how many spam comments I deal with everyday working across my three blogs (Lisa Isbell, White Oak Attic and this one). Some marketers and webmasters still think dropping loads of rambling, nonsense packed with keywords and links into blog comments will serve them well in gaining relevant back links to their sites and so continue this annoying practice.

Instead produce something of value. Actually participate within the community you’re interested in attracting to your content. Post relevant comments aimed at participating in the discussion. Express your opinion, highlight useful resources you offer and promote good content of others within the community. This practice not only will gain you relevant backlinks to your sites but also build your reputation as a genuine member of this community and make your efforts as a market leader shine.

3. Search engine submission: It is amazing how many companies are still paying large sums of fees for search engine directory submission in light of all the new material coming out about Internet marketing but then again, how are we supposed to know? When you are a small business you can’t possibly soak all of this information in AND run your business. If you are into marketing full time you know what I’m talking about, the landscape is changing and constantly moving and even when you’re in it full time it’s tough to stay on top of it all. As part of my baptism by fire in opening my own online business, I learned much of this the hard way – the old “fail in the field” method which still has plenty of merit as long as you understand you are doing it. Not so much if you aren’t approaching it as a test.

Instead of paying someone to submit your website to a directory expect this as part of any SEO work you outsource and start working toward building your own links using inbound marketing principles. Remember, everything you’re doing online should be building blocks, pieces of a much larger whole – your establishing yourself as a market leader. Toward that end, submitting to directories certainly won’t hurt but it shouldn’t be a priority. Link building is another story. Send out links to your content via social media outlets, with the proper anchor text in your blog posts. Make sure your website/blog links are everywhere you include your name – make it easy for people to see you have a website and visit it. Using social media aggregation tools can really help in spreading your link to the masses. Ping.fm is an option but there are many others.

4. Meta tag optimization: In the past this was an important ingredient in getting your site ranked as far as SEO efforts are concerned. Google is on record as saying they pay no attention to it these days so if you’ve been sweating about how to jam in a bunch of keywords there, don’t waste the effort.

Instead, make your keyword meta description meaningful to readers, still include those keywords but in a way that adds value for visitors not because you are expecting any extra boost from Google. Today, Google is more interested in improving the user experience, good news for any who are really putting in the effort to add value to a targeted audience. My strategy is to do what is logical and helpful to the visitor and this includes the meta description and keywords if for no other purpose than to keep you from straying off your focus which will cause visitors to be a bit confused about your marketing message and make converting them to customers much more difficult. Use the meta description and keywords to keep a laser focus on your marketing message and you can’t go wrong.

5. Link Exchanges: Also called reciprocal linking is a popular method for building links to websites. Done on a very light, sensible level there is nothing wrong with exchanging links with other businesses when it makes sense. The trouble comes when businesses engage in link exchange schemes to intentionally influence rankings which Google deems a violation and so could punish your website accordingly.

Instead, make your link building efforts centered on helping other businesses by offering testimonials and good content for your visitors. If you are sincere then odds are you can benefit by helping your visitors find what they need. If the business genuinely solves a problem you’ve had, you can bet others will appreciate your insight and the business will likely want to reciprocate in kind giving you a testimonial and a link that won’t get either of you into any trouble with Google.

The bottom line here is stop thinking about ways to game the system and focus all of your efforts on good inbound marketing practices. All the pieces fitting together like a puzzle as a strategy that supports one goal. SEO still has a place in the puzzle but now it’s just a different part of the overall picture.

If you are looking to reach the masses all in one place, these numbers cannot be ignored.  True, there is still a lot of work to be done in learning exactly how to use these sites as marketing vehicles but be assured all platforms are working around the clock to find the best solutions.  The best formula these days appears to be a formula for mixing things together in your own recipe.

Think of the various social media platforms as neighborhoods.  Some will spend more time in one or the other, some will never venture outside any but their favorite and some will want you to remind them to come to your neighborhood (email newsletter).  Depending on budget available the approaches will vary.  The wonderful thing about using any of these platforms is they allow you to invent your very own approach if you don’t want to follow along with the masses.

Is your business using social media as a marketing tool this year?

Advertising Age,  a leading source for marketing and media news wrote a very informative piece about Scott Brown’s use of Social Media in his campaign and how it appears to have been very influential in reaching voters with his message.  Advertising Age goes on to reference David Meerman Scott’s (a Cokely supporter) comments on Cokely’s lack of Social Media presence in reference to an event Cokely was having before the election. “Mr. Scott, author of “The New Rules of Marketing and PR,” who attended the event at Northeastern University, said the campaign asked students to volunteer at a phone bank, post yard signs and the like, but didn’t mention their likely primary means of communication, Facebook, invented in a dorm room across the Charles River at Harvard.”

This article is just another of many that illustrates Social Media and the Internet as a whole, cannot be discounted any longer as a powerful marketing vehicle.  It is not business as usual where marketing is concerned and we are likely to continue to see some major changes developing over the next few years.  More and more new technology will be available and part of the mainstream.

Businesses (and politicians) who continue to ignore how powerful Social Media is in reaching an audience may be doing so at their own peril.

Many popular news vehicles have started charging for content and The New York Times has announced plans to go back down this road again after having attempted it sometime back. It failed the last time but the world is a little different now, maybe it will work with many other news sources also beginning to move in this direction.

The Internet is buzzing with a variety of blog posts about this decision (click here to see just one of them or explore Google if you want to know more). Exploring several of these articles we find many go pretty deep in giving details on the continued decline of print and traditional media in terms of circulation and advertising revenue.  Those like me who have been inside the traditional media world for the past several years know the realities.  Whether they are said out loud depends on a variety of circumstances.  It’s like the elephant in the room.  It is easy to suggest it is the economy and I’m sure it sped things up but I don’t think that is the reason for the decline.

In the past I did want to believe it was the economy causing the slide downward.  The alternative gave me a sick feeling since selling advertising in a print publication was my career and I happen to still truly enjoy print publications.  Like many of my colleagues (both those still hanging in there and those who’ve moved out) I just didn’t want to contemplate this as a permanent trend.  I believe many are still holding onto the notion that things will just go back to the way they were or maybe just a slightly modified version once we pull out of this recession.

The decision by a media giant like the New York Times to take a second run at charging for their content should rattle at least some who are still clinging to this notion.  Social Media, the Internet, email marketing, RSS feeds, etc. are not toys and they are not going away.  There is a lot of fumbling around by everyone in trying to learn how these tools fit into the big picture but that’s normal.   This is all fairly new and there are no experts.  That’s right, no experts.

Since the sand shifts every single day out here on the Internet there can be no true experts, only authorities in the sense of spending a lot of time experimenting and learning what these new technologies offer.  I read a book recently, The Outliers by Malcom Gladwell.  In it, he takes us through a series of discussions about geniuses to illustrate we don’t necessarily have to be the smartest but instead just smart enough. So don’t worry about being an expert or even finding one…just get smart enough.

That’s the benchmark we need to strive for in stirring in social media and other Internet gadgetry to the marketing mix.  Smart enough to use it to grow our businesses.  Smart enough to recognize the need to change.  Smart enough to just get busy and do it.