Not only does it distract, and endlessly digress, it takes the wind out of your passionate sales. It’s not that twitter is a bad thing, per se, but it can cloud focus on the core variables that make a business work. Closing deals, invoicing and getting paid. This, of course, all comes after creating a product or service, packaging it and selling it.
And this is my beef. So much of the online entrepreneurial zeal is getting lost in a cloud of ideas, messages and directionless digressions that it are not delivering one clear thing that is priceable, and buyable. Consultancy, knowledge, experience and enthusiasm are great but they are hard to take off a shelf and bring to the cash register. If you can’t describe what you’re doing and why and how much it costs, how can someone buy it?
I know there are so many twitter positives for certain types of businesses, but, from my cursory look, these are service business, and more than that, they require a certain type of digital networking element to them. They also often photographic or design in nature!
The difficulty arises when people look at twitter and think they can force any business model down its 140 character throat. Very often you can’t, and you shouldn’t try. You can do more harm than good to your fragile brand. And the last thing you want to do is to expend energy doing the wrong thing well. It’ll look like a hit, but only if you don’t put a value on your personal time, as with a lot of ‘free’ open source programs. Don’t put a cost on 10 years of tinkering and teaching yourself how it’s done by you for nothing and you’ll find most things in life will be ‘free’. I could make my own kitchen furniture if I gave it enough time, but the cost of that time? The quality?
So, what I’m recommending is a mentoring service so that companies can find the right fit, social media wise, for the business needs. Not just the next big thing, or the latest buzz word that sounds like great value, but the right thing that gives the most efficient bang for the buck and doesn’t require of the user/client a lifestyle change on their part, or a similar lifestyle change for their market. And also, to identify the best business that requires the least time for the maximum return on time and financial investment. Clean, efficient and targeted at a real, not an imagined, market that exists today and is only likely to grow.
So I’d say do what works, go where your market goes, but do it cleanly and efficiently, and don’t twitter about it, unless you’ve got a business for tweets. And, if you want me to bend an ear your way and bounce some ideas around, let me know. That’s a tweet DM I’ll answer.
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