I have been consulting a lot lately on social media and the things you can do to promote your business or yourself. These thoughts came today in response to some of these recent conversations.
Advertising and promotion is changing at a rapid pace, the things we used to do are no longer working or in some cases not even there anymore. On my own social media efforts I have built out a wagon wheel of marketing outposts from websites, to Facebook, to blogs, Flickr and Picassa image posts, twitter, all kinds of things, all cross linked to each other, all trying to bring traffic and readers to my sites. Social media marketing takes constant attention and efforts with all kinds of stuff and often it doesn’t even seem to work, it is kind of hit and miss, but I keep trying. The above graphic is a layout of some of what I do.
We are all at the beginning of the learning and the transition from traditional advertising and promotion to this new way of communicating. If it all seems confusing and not very effective, you are not alone. I work with and talk about this stuff to a lot clients and associates and everyone is trying to figure it out. For myself I do a lot of different things and sometimes it works and other times it just seems like I am operating on faith that somewhere down the line something will happen. It takes a huge commitment of time and energy, I guess I just personally find it fascinating, so I guess that is why I do it.
One of the things I tell people all the time, and I am not sure everyone gets it, but I will say it again and one of the reasons I think it is important. The thing I think that is the most amazing about what is going on right now in terms of individual people and the web is that we can talk to the world and you can do it for just about free. Pretty much everything we do on the web is global and free. You can send your music or art or words or products or whatever out to the entire planet, and you should. I tell people to act global and think local. It is just an amazing thing that you can speak to the world, especially if you can create content or music or images or products. Never in the history of man have we been able to do this on our own terms, with our own material and for just about free to the entire planet. Everyone, including rich and poor, companies and governments gets the same platform and the same computer screens to tell their story. It is all about your own energy and desire and talent.
I look at myself as an example, I am one person, I sell products around the planet, from software, to books, to gifts and apparel. My videos are viewed around the globe, this blog is read around the globe, my conversations are with fans and customers around the globe. This is all from stuff I have created on my own. Some of my products are actually produced and shipped from my office, but most of it is marketed, produced, printed, sold, and shipped from people I have never met and from services I have never seen. My marketing is global, I use Youtube, and blogs, and social media and websites, Facebook and anything I can find. I try everything, I think it is simply amazing. If you can produce content of any kind, the world is just sitting there, send it out, see what happens, adjust and send it out again.
