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The ROI of social media is survival

March 14, 2012 — 5 Comments

If you’re a huge brand, there are tools out there to help you measure the ROI of your social media efforts.  For smaller businesses, though, it can be much more difficult.  Perhaps it’s worth $700 per tweet, but it’s rarely that consistent. :)

More and more, the ROI of social media is simply that your business will continue to exist.  For example, if I asked you for the ROI on your business phone, your response would likely be “Who knows, but we obviously need to have a phone!”.  And you’re right!  The same goes for social tools; customers fully expect you to have a presence on social networks to help them find answers to their questions and hopefully to encourage them to come in for a visit.

Below are three example of businesses near me that have closed in the past year, and I feel that a lack of social media presence contributed to the demise of each of them.  A bad business will go under no matter how well they tweet, so perhaps these companies were doomed anyhow.  However, I think a bit of effort in the social world would have helped all three tremendously.

Bellacino’s

I loved Bellacino’s.  They featured “grinders” and pizza, and it was quite tasty.  They’d put coupons in some of those coupon packs that you get in the mail, but that was about as far as they went.  Their lack of social media simply meant that they were rarely in the front of our mind.  I had no real desire to “connect” with them necessarily, but if their coupons had been on Facebook I would have gladly hooked up with them on there.  If I had done so, perhaps they would have appeared in my feed from time and time and we probably would have gone in more often.

They went out of business around a year ago.

Stadium Bar & Grill

Stadium was simply made for social media, and they simply ignored it.  The restaurant did all kinds of fun activities, like trivia night and local music, but did a pitiful job of presenting it online.  For about 18 months their Facebook page had a total of one update that said something like “check back often for special events and coupons!”.  Great idea, but no execution.  They eventually started updating more often, but hadn’t built up a fan base of any kind and didn’t have enough time to build a presence.

I emailed a few of the owners to offer to help them out (for free, even), and never got a response.  They went out of business last month.

Rita’s Italian Ice

Rita’s was a place that served frozen ice, kind of like slushies.  It was really good!  Every day they’d have a different selection of flavors, which meant it was a perfect opportunity for social media.  Before I’d run out there to get treats for the family, my girls would always ask what flavors they had today.  Because of their lack of Facebook and Twitter updates, I’d have to call.  It was painful.  The poor girl answering the phone was typically trying to help a customer in the store at the time, while she’d be reading me a list of flavors that I’d be frantically writing down.  It was stupid.

With them, not only did I offer to help but I even took the time to set up a Twitter account for them, brand it, and show them how to use it.  Rather than updating daily with the flavors, they’d update it maybe once a month.  Useless.  I got tired of calling, so the only time we’d go is if the whole family was out together so that everyone could pick their own flavor.

They went out of business six months ago.

How do you do it right?

Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt

It’s not all bad news, though.  We have a local frozen yogurt shop called Menchie’s that is simply amazing on Facebook.  They’re just a little store in a strip mall and they have over 1200 fans on Facebook!  If you look at their page you’ll see why — tons of updates, coupons, interaction with every user, and just a great job of connecting with their customers.

It’s not rocket science; in fact, it’s quite simple.  The issue is that it takes time to do it right, and you need to commit to it.  I have no idea who runs the Menchie’s page (the owner, perhaps?), but they put the time into it to do it right.  As a result, they’re getting more customers through the door.

It’s no guarantee

I’m certainly not saying that this is a guarantee that your business will flourish.  Those other three stores still might have gone out of business, and Menchie’s might be gone in a year.  Ultimately, you still need to provide a great product at a great price and treat people right when they come in the door.

I can promise this, though: in all four cases above, social media was a distinct factor for bringing people into the business (or failing to), which is huge.

You’ll notice that all four examples are food related, and that was intentional — social media was seemingly made for restaurants, so if you’re still wondering if “that Twitter thing might catch on”, you need to get in gear now!  If you need help getting started, just get in touch with me and I’ll be happy to help.

In Companies, Facebook, Social Media , , , , ,
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Working toward A Brighter Web

January 24, 2012 — 3 Comments

A Brighter WebOver the years I’ve posted quite a few video tutorials on here and on other sites.  The problem is that they were scattered all over — many on here, quite a few on Google Earth Blog, various ones on my Google+ account, etc.  Recently I set out to get all of those organized, and the result seems to be pretty good.

With the help of Ali Green, we’ve put together a new site called A Brighter Web.  On the site we have over 60 video tutorials on topics such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and WordPress.  We’re adding a few new videos every day, and we’ll be expanding our range of topics over time.

With that in mind, what would you like to see on a site like that?  More social platforms, like FourSquare and LinkedIn?  Or perhaps software tutorials, like Photoshop?  Leave a comment and let us know what you’d like to see, and we’ll certainly take your ideas into consideration moving foward.

Thanks!

In Facebook, Social Media, Technology, Twitter, Videos, WordPress , , , , , ,
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It’s time to stop dabbling with social media

January 12, 2012 — 3 Comments

Last week I had the opportunity to meet with a few groups of United Methodist Church leaders near Washington, DC to discuss how the church can best use their websites and social media tools to reach people more effectively.

My social media presentation was largely focused on the fact that Twitter and Facebook are no longer tools for churches to be “playing with”; they’ve become legitimate communication tools.  While most churches are doing fairly well with Facebook, Twitter remains a problem.  I’m hoping the tools I shared with them will help get things rolling.

Google+

Even though the sessions were only a week ago, my thoughts on Google+ have changed.  At the time, I said something like “You need to focus hard on Facebook and Twitter, and start playing with Google+ because you’ll need to be active there later this year“.  As it turns out, “later this year” is now.  The reason for the sudden shift is Google’s release of “Search, plus Your World”, which adds heavy Google+ integration into the search results.  Here’s a quick video showing how that works:

That alone should be enough to encourage you to get your organization on Google+.  But it goes further.  Try searching for “music” or “cars” and you’ll get a result similar to the shot below.  Notice the area that I outlined in red.

Notice that the red box is for Google+ profiles only; no Twitter or Facebook found there.  That is seen by some as anti-competitive, and perhaps it is, but that’s simply how it works right now.  Britney Spears trails a variety of artists on Twitter (Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, etc), but none of them are on Google+ yet.  As a result, she’s suddenly getting a lot more free promotion when someone performs a search.

For now, that area doesn’t matter much for your business, but it will soon.  For local searches, Google will almost certainly start showing businesses in your area instead of just generic industry-related results.  If you wait until that happens before you join Google+, you’ll be way behind.  Suppose Katy Perry sees those results and joins Google+ to get back in the game.  While she may catch up to Spears eventually, she’s already behind by 1.3 million followers.  How far ahead do you want your competition to get before you join the game?

Faces in the main results

Not only is that side bar relevant, but the main search results (in both personal and non-personal mode) are already full of results from Google+.  In many cases, those results show the face of the author of the post even if the post was made on their own blog.  For example, the below search for “google earth imagery january” shows my face next to the second result, because it knows that I wrote that article and it connects to my Google+ profile; and this is the non-personal results!

Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket

As much as I love Google+, I’m certainly not advising you to bail on Facebook or Twitter.  As I said at the beginning, those are legit communications platforms and your organization needs to be active on both of them.  For now, at least, all three are very important to your organization.

If you want to dabble in social media, there are places to do that.  Play with Pinterest (connect with me), play with Path, or play with any of the other new services popping up.  Pinterest may become more serious this year, but for now you can just poke the tires a bit.

I don’t have time

I hear it a lot — “not another service to keep up with!”, but it’s all about your mind set.  Instead of worrying about how you’ll have time for three separate services, just look at it from the positive side.  Now you have another way to connect with your customers, and this one will help you show up more frequently in the search results too.  It’s a win-win!

Once you get things set up, simply take 10-15 minutes/day to post your latest thoughts and respond to people that are talking to you.  It doesn’t have to be a huge deal.  If it takes longer than that to respond to everything coming your way, then your business is likely doing well and you can afford to spend more time working with those people (or hire someone to help you out).

Do you think any other services are worthy of the full attention of your business right now?  I can see LinkedIn being one for a few organizations, but that’s about it.  Agree?

In Facebook, Google+, Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Twitter , , , , , , ,
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Marlow’s Tavern, meet Gary Vaynerchuk

December 10, 2011 — 4 Comments

Last week, I saw a speech that Gary Vaynerchuk gave to a bunch of RE/MAX realtors on the topic of social media engagement and it was quite awesome.  Here’s the video if you care to watch it:

Watching it inspired me to pick up Gary’s latest book, “The Thank You Economy“.  Awesome book, highly recommended. The folks at Marlow’s Tavern really need to read it.

As a general rule, we enjoy Marlow’s.  They have a few locations near us, good food, and solid service.  Tonight we took our babysitter out there for her birthday, but the evening had a few minor issues, and I think they could really benefit from having more of a “Thank You” approach to business.

No birthday desserts

We made sure to mention that today was our babysitter’s birthday, because we knew that Marlow’s did the little free cupcake dessert like most restaurants.  Nope, not anymore.  ”Some people lie about it being their birthday, so we can’t do that anymore.”  Uh-oh.  Really?  Did that surprise them?  Of course some people will lie about it — that’s why you give them a cheap cupcake and not a free steak. We had three adults and two kids, with a total bill of $78, and they’re concerned that they might give away a $3 dessert that isn’t legit?

While you certainly need to watch out for people taking advantage of you, this just seemed really shallow.  Companies that do customer service the right away (like Zappos) just focus on treating their customers like rock stars, and don’t worry so much about potentially giving up $3 every now and then.

My food was SLOW

It was remarkable.  The other four people in our party got their food fairly quickly, but I didn’t.  So I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  We’re guessing it was 10-12 minutes before my food arrived, which is crazy for a place like that, but things happen.  However, I still don’t know what happened.  I got a quick “sorry ’bout that” when they brought it, and that was it.  It was clear they didn’t care about the issue a single bit. A much better approach would have been like what Scott Stratten had happen at a hotel a few years ago; he had a very bad breakfast, but they apologized and explained the problem and he was much happier as a result.  Here’s his full write-up of that experience.

I decided not to press the the issue with them, just to see how they’d handle it.  Simply put, they didn’t.  No apology from anyone, no deduction on our bill.

(Speaking of the bill – $2.50 each for kid’s drinks?  Wow!)

Twitter

With those in mind, I did a little digging when I got home.  They’re pretty solid on Twitter (@MarlowsTavern), so I poked around for a while.  The content they push out is solid, but their conversation skills are weak.  They reply to some comments, but it appears to be at random.  Just in the past week:

  • Jennifer asked whether a dish at Marlow’s was gluten free.  A few days later, she got a reply from them — yes!  Excellent.  So she replied back asking if they had a gluten free menu, or how they should request gluten free products.  Crickets…
  • Robbie tweeted that he was taking his wife to Marlow’s for her birthday.  A quick “congrats” would have been nice, but they simply let it go without comment…
  • Another user tweeted to rave about their Sunday buffet.  Again, no reply.

Seriously, businesses need to build true fans to be successful and here are people actively telling their world about your restaurant — and you ignore them?

Google Place Pages

How about their Google Place pages?  They have a handful of locations, so I just checked out a few of them.  I found these two gems rather quickly:

The response from Marlow’s, as expected, was silence.

Google+

Needless to say, they’re not on Google+ yet.  Not that I can really fault them for that (it’s new, smaller than Facebook/Twitter, etc), but people are already talking about them on there…

Website

Since they’ll probably be reading this, I’ll toss in a few suggested website tweaks as a bonus.  Their website is really pretty solid (many restaurants have dreadfully awful sites), but it could use some adjustments:

  • On your front page, you have a link to your “to-go” menu.  Seems like people might often be in the car when they call for that.  And the menu is a PDF?
  • In the footer, “copyright 2007″.
  • Also in the footer is the “designed by” garbage.  Don’t leave that on there.
  • Your canonicalization is a bit messed up.
  • “Follow us on Facebook”.  Don’t you “follow” people on Twitter and “like” them on Facebook?  People get confused enough, so don’t switch them up for no good reason.  I’ve never liked the words “follow us” anyhow, because it implies that “you should follow us and we’ll send you a bunch of crap”.  I’m glad the Twitter widget (which you have on your site) says “Join the conversation” instead, as that sounds much better.
  • Your Entertainment page encourages people to visit you on MySpace, which you haven’t updated in about two years.  Can’t blame you for the lack of updates, but you should probably remove that link.

It just takes time

Social media can be difficult for some businesses.  If you sell toilet plungers, it’ll take some work to come up with a creative campaign.  For restaurants, though, it’s dead simple.  Just put in the effort, connect with your patrons, and prove that you really care about them.  I should also mention that their Facebook pages (like this one) seem to be managed quite well, so they’re not totally ignoring everyone.

At the end of the day, these weren’t killer problems for Marlow’s.  We certainly think less of them, no doubt, but we’ll be back eventually — they’ll just be a little bit lower on the list.

In Companies, Facebook, Google+, Marketing, Mobile, SEO, Social Media, Twitter, Videos , , , , , , ,
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Your competition isn’t always right

August 26, 2011 — 6 Comments

No matter what line of business you’re in, you can often get inspiration and ideas by checking out your competition.  You can see what kind of stuff they’re putting on their website, how they’re using social media, what new products they’re stocking, etc.  However, you ultimately need to trust yourself.  Here are a few examples.

Using music to set the tone

I was recently talking to a client about her site, and suggested we take the background music off.  After a brief discussion, she agreed.  When I asked why she put it up there in the first place, she said that a lot of her competition did that and she was trying to match them.  Being a brand-new business, emulating some of the established sites is certainly a great idea.  Now that she’s removed the music and they haven’t, she’s a step ahead!

Facebook “welcome tabs”

I have a lot of clients asking for “welcome tabs” on their Facebook Page.  While it’s certainly appropriate in a few situations, it seems that most people are doing it simply because everyone else is doing it, and no one is really thinking it through.  Most users come to your Facebook page for the content — information, specials, etc.  Why put an extra page in their way?

It feels a lot to me like the “splash pages” everyone had in the late 90′s — simply an unnecessary step between your user and the content they want.  We all eventually realized how stupid those were, so how are Facebook welcome tabs any different? (Honestly — leave a comment and convince me how they’re a good thing for everyone.  I’m certainly open to changing my mind if someone can supply a solid argument.)

Copying the church down the road

One church I worked at was obsessed with the other big church just down the road.  We’d often spend thousands of dollars copying activities that they did, even if we didn’t need them.  It was quite sad.  There were essentially two ways that our leadership viewed things:

  • If they’re doing x, and we’re not, we need to start.
  • If we’re doing x, and they’re not, we need to stop wasting time on it.

This was especially problematic during the rise of social media, because the “other church” was slow to adopt it.  Therefore, it was tough for us to convince our church leadership that it was worthwhile.  The “other church” is a wonderful place, but they have made some very poor technological choices over the past few years; very dumb things with their website, very little social media, etc.  Copying them in those areas would have been a foolish mistake.

Stylish restaurant websites

Have you ever tried to pull up a restaurant website on your phone?  It’s almost always brutal.  Slate recently had an article about this, and I agree completely.  Not only are they often unusable on a phone (especially an Apple device, with no hope of loading their cute Flash menus), but they’re equally frustrating from a normal browser.

My thought is that it’s the restaurant owners and their desire for a particular ambience that cause most of the issues.  While you certainly want the actual restaurant to have that feel, putting cheesy background music being a painfully “creative” navigation bar isn’t the way to do it on the website.

The University website

(via xkcd.  awesome site)

Part of this comes back to the problem of the University website.  Universities think that we want to read about the school’s philosophy and press releases, and that idea is validated by other universities posting the same junk on their home page.  This is very similar to churches that post a big link to their denomination’s website, rather than providing decent driving directions.

Check them out, but be smart

I’m certainly not saying you shouldn’t see what your competition is doing.  As I said at the beginning, you can often get some good ideas from them.  Just be smart, and always view things through the eyes of your customers.  Ask yourself, “if I was a customer, why would I visit the site and what would I be looking for?”  If the answer is “cheesy music and a mission statement”, find someone to help you think through it a bit further. :)

In Church, Companies, Facebook, Marketing, Mobile, Site Content, Social Media , , , , , , ,
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Car dealers don’t listen on Twitter either

May 9, 2011 — 3 Comments

Late last year I performed a few simply Twitter tests for churches.  I found 36 churches that had their Twitter account listed on their home page, and sent them a simple message to see how many would respond.  Out of the 36, only four of them replied — just 11%.  If you missed those posts, here is the test with the first 11 churches, and here is the test with the other 25.

I recently sent a tweet to my car dealer to see about coming in for an oil change, but they never replied.  Despite the big dollars that car dealerships throw at TV and radio commercials, I began to think that they were likely ignoring Twitter as well.

I did the same kind of test that I did with the churches.  I found 20 local dealerships that promoted their Twitter account on their home page and sent them all a simple tweet — “What time is your showroom open this Sunday?“.  As before, I wanted to keep the question simple as to not waste much of their time.  The tweet was sent around 8:05 on Wednesday evening, giving them plenty of time (and two full business days) to respond.  As with the church example, all 20 tweets were sent from different accounts so we wouldn’t look too obvious.

The results?  Almost identical to the churches, with just 2 out of 20 replying — 10%.

The Good

Two dealerships replied.  @MariettaToyota wrote back to say “Marietta Toyota is open from 1 pm to 6 pm on Sundays! Is there something special you’re looking for?“.  Perfect!  @LandmarkDodge was the other that replied, by saying “11am, hope to see you!“.  Very solid.  They both took about 24 hours to respond which is a bit slow, but certainly acceptable.

The Lazy

Nine dealerships simply haven’t tweeted since we did the test, much less replied to us.  A few notable ones:

  • @SandySpgsToyota — Just a dump from their Facebook account, but it’s been over two weeks since they’ve said anything.
  • @RickCaseMazda — No updates at all since last November, but they have 252 followers.
  • @GeorgiaFord — Just dumping everything via Ping.fm.  Ping is a fine service, but you can’t just post info and never follow up on it.
  • @HennessyHonda — No updates in over a year, with the last update saying “The dealership is closed now…“.  Given the context of no updates in a year, I thought perhaps it meant they were closed for good.  That doesn’t seem to be the case, but this stream is quite a mess in a number of ways.
  • @CobbCountyKiaGA — Using some service called “ReachCast” for their service, but they haven’t tweeted in a month.  Perhaps someone needs to build “ListenCast” instead?

The Bullhorns

Nine other dealerships posted at least one new update since our inquiry, but (unknowingly, I hope) completely ignored us.  Some highlights from there:

About Facebook

Most of these dealerships do a fine job with Facebook, and that’s certainly a great thing.  Facebook is an excellent tool to help keep your brand front of mind, introduce new products, answer questions, etc. It just seems silly to have Twitter plastered all over the site and then just ignore people when they try to engage with them.

The other thing that I’m seeing more of lately is people simply using their Twitter account to drive people to their Facebook Page.  Someone has chosen to follow you on Twitter and hear what you have to say, and you simply push them to your Facebook Page instead of engaging with them?  That’s so foolish.

What’s the solution?

It’s pretty simple — listen.  Use a tool like TweetDeck or HootSuite and start paying attention.

If you don’t have time to monitor these social outlets yourself, then hire a company to do it for you.  In most cases, it costs far less than even a part-time employee, and you’ll be able to keep things monitored 24/7.  There are tons of companies out there that can help you with it; just be sure to check them out carefully to make sure they really know their stuff.  You can start by asking these five questions, check out their Klout score and find out how long they’ve been on Twitter (“experts” didn’t just join last year).

What do you think?

Is it worth the time/effort for these dealers to get more involved on Twitter?  It looks bad to say things like “socialize with us” (like this one) or “connect” (like this one) when they’re clearly not doing either of those.

Are they dropping the ball, or am I being too critical?

In Companies, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter ,
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My favorite WordPress plug-ins

May 1, 2011 — 4 Comments

Three years ago I wrote up a list of my favorite plug-ins, and decided that it was well past time to give the list a fresh look.  While many of them have stayed the same, I’ve got a few additions and a few deletions.

The ones that stayed the same

These plug-ins have certainly been updated in the past few years, but remain part of every blog I manage:

Akismet – Amazingly awesome spam fighting plugin.

FeedBurner Feedsmith – I still run all of my blog RSS feeds through FeedBurner, and this is a great plug-in to quietly redirect visitors over there.

Google XML Sitemaps – A simple way to generate an XML sitemap and automatically notify search engines of your new posts.

Highlight Author Comments – Make your replies stand out when you reply to comments on a post of yours.

Subscribe to Comments – Allow users to get email notifications of new posts after they leave one.  I love when blogs have this, so I can be notified if someone replies to my comment and then we can continue the conversation.

The ones that I’ve moved away from

Here are the plug-ins that I no longer use regularly, for one reason or another:

All in One SEO Pack -Most of the themes that I use (typically from StudioPress) have great SEO baked right in and this is less important.

Enhanced WP Contact Form – I’ve switched to Wufoo for virtually all of my forms.

Fancy Zoom – I still use it from time to time, but most themes have better image management.

Top Commentators – This isn’t really a bad plug-in, I simply don’t use it any more.

Sociable – I’ve removed this in favor of Twitter and Facebook-specific plug-ins, shown below.

Twitter Tools – I now use dlvr.it to handle this instead, but I use it rather sparingly; be fresh on Twitter, not automated!

WordPress.com Stats – Still a great plugin, and I use it on a few blogs, but I primarily rely on Google Analytics.

The new additions!

I’ve dropped some plug-ins, but also added some new ones over the past few years such as:

Canonical URL’s – A very simple plug-in to add the canonical tag to your pages.  Not overly helpful in many cases, but can be excellent for your SEO sometimes.  (What is the canonical tag?)

PuSHPress – This enabled PuSubHubbub support for your blog. In short, it makes sure that RSS readers and others will get your posts instantly, rather than the next time they check in a few hours.  (more about the PuSHPress plugin)

RSS Footer – This adds a line of text (with a few links) the bottom of each post in your RSS feed.  The basic idea is that if someone is scraping your site and posting it as their own, you’ll at least still get some free links back to your site!

Twitter Button for WordPress – A simple way to add a “tweet” button to your posts.

WP FB Like Button – A simple way to add a Facebook “like” button to your posts.

WPtouch – A great plug-in that creates a mobile version of your site and automatically serves it to mobile phones when they connect.

You?

What about you?  Any other killer plugins that I’m missing from the list?

In Analytics, Facebook, Mobile, SEO, Technology, Twitter, WordPress , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Great stats on Social Media usage by the Real Estate industry

April 6, 2011 — 1 Comment

I’m down in Fort Morgan, AL this week for a little vacation with the family, and I’m shocked at how lazy the realtors are around here.  Like most beachfront communities, most of the homes are either for sale or rent, yet many of the sale/rent signs are broken, every “take info” box is empty, and I’ve only seen one house that has a unique URL on it.  90% have no web link, and the rest simply link back to the main site for that company.  QR codes aren’t even being considered.  If you’re a hard worker and want to live at the beach, move down here — you’d be a hero!

For a wider look at the Real Estate industry, check out the infographic below, created by Mashable. It illustrates some very interesting numbers regarding how the Real Estate industry is using social media.

A few things that jumped out at me:

  • 84% of real estate professionals are now using social media.  That’s it? I would have expected that number to be in the mid-90′s.  Granted, many aren’t using it effectively, but that 84% includes those people.  16% apparently aren’t doing anything with social media yet.
  • 73% of homeowners are more likely to list with a realtor that is willing to do video, but only 12% of the real estate industry current has a YouTube account.
  • The real estate industry uses Facebook more than other small businesses, but they’re way behind in Twitter usage.

Anyhow, check out the infographic below.  Anything else jump out at you?

In Companies, Facebook, Real Estate, Social Media, Technology, Twitter , , , , ,
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Turn on HTTPS to make your Facebook and Twitter more secure

March 16, 2011 — 2 Comments

Facebook

A few weeks ago, Facebook added the ability to always use a secure connection when accessing their site.  This doesn’t improve your security at home, but will help prevent people from “sniffing” your account when you’re on public wifi at Starbucks and places like that.

To set that up, simply go to your Account Settings page, click on [Account Security] near the bottom, and then check the box to “Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible”, as shown here:

Twitter

Twitter has had the same issue as Facebook (vulnerabilities when on public wifi) and yesterday they finally rolled out the https option for users.

The solution is quite similar to Facebook — just go to your settings page and check the box at the bottom for “Always use HTTPS”, as shown here:

Just do it

Many of the posts are this blog are merely suggestions, with various advantages and disadvantages that you need to dig through. This isn’t one of those cases, as there’s no real disadvantage — it takes just a few seconds to set this up on each account of yours, so take a minute now and get it done.

In Facebook, Social Media, Technology, Twitter , , , ,
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Don’t be everything – just be awesome

February 21, 2011 — Leave a comment

As I’ve been building my business for the past few years, various personal weaknesses have shown up.  Some of them, like my lack of organization, have been corrected using things such as the GTD method.  Other weaknesses, such as my laughably bad graphic design skills,  I’ve consciously decided to leave as weaknesses.  Why?

“I can do anything!”

The easiest way to explain it is to introduce you to Bob.  I met Bob at a meeting last week, and his introduction to the group went something like this:

My name is Bob and I’m a financial planner. I can help you with your taxes, retirement planning, budgeting, estate planning, mortgages, car loans, college savings or anything else you might need.  Just call me!

The problem is that if I need something from that list, I probably only need that one thing.  Suppose I want to talk to someone about retirement planning.  Do I go to a retirement planning expert, or the guy that also happens to do retirement planning?  I go to the expert, of course.

Job hunting?

The same idea applies to job hunting.  If you’re trying to land a job with a company, you need to convince them that you’re the very best person to fill their opening.  If you apply for three different positions at the same company, they’ll quickly see that you’re not much of an expert at any of them, and they’ll fill the opening with someone more suited to that precise position.

Graphics and Flash

Along with weak graphic design skills, I can’t do Flash.  At all.  A few years ago I considered taking the time to learn, but opted not to.  However, projects still come up from time to time that need a Flash element or two.  So why didn’t I learn it?

It’s because I don’t want to be like Bob.  I have a smaller skill set that I specialize in (primarily SEO, WordPress, Social Media) and I focus all of my energy on being the best I can in those areas.  For everything else, I find great people that can serve your needs.  For example:

  • If you need some fancy graphic design, I’ll point you over to the awesome Ali Green.
  • If you need Flash work, I’ll send you to Harrison.
  • Need some copy written?  Talk to Evie.
  • Did your server just crash? Go see Derrick at Human I.T.
  • And the list goes on and on…

However, if you need help making Facebook work better for your company, or need to figure out why your site isn’t ranked well in Google, I’m your guy.  Though my skills aren’t perfect, all of my daily eduction (via Twitter, Google Reader, etc) is focused on being as sharp in those areas as possible.

Don’t get caught in a niche

That being said, be careful.  Five years ago, if I had decided to become a full-on MySpace expert I’d be in trouble today!  You not only need to keep up with the times, but you need to have a wide enough skill set so you don’t have all of your eggs in one basket.  It’s even better if you can make them all work together; for example, I help many clients use WordPress to assist their social media efforts and help improve their SEO.

Do the same thing with your job

Whatever line of work you’re in, you can do the same thing.  Focus in, work hard, and try to become an expert at a facet or two of your industry.

What about you? Have you ever intentionally not learned a new skill in order to stay focused?  Or do you try to learn everything you can?

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