Without much effort, anyone can easily find false promises online. I am amused—sometimes I laugh out loud—when I see advice online about jumping into social media right now as the one-size-fits-all solution to marketing yourself or your organization or products and services. While I continue laughing at the ridiculousness of such advice about getting started using social media today, let me stop and ask you a question: Do you know how to buy the right shoes for blogging?
I previously ran every day. So, I guess I can claim to know a few things about running shoes. I do know that buying the correct shoes for running or for any other athletic activity can mean the difference between physical injury and physical health. Choose to ignore this wisdom at your own peril.
As someone who has built websites for others since the 1990s, I can claim to know a few things about marketing using the Internet. And, it may surprise you to learn that I see a relationship between buying shoes for running and buying into the current craze about getting into social media.
Here’s the truth: You would never believe any person who told you that all you need to attain physical health is to buy the latest running shoes. Buying running shoes only gives you the ability to run while avoiding physical injury to your feet, your legs, and your entire body. But, the elusive reality is: You can buy the most expensive running shoes, yet the results that you can get from using those expensive running shoes depend more on what’s in your brain than what’s on your feet.
The same is true about the relationship between succeeding in marketing using the Internet and your use of social media, blogging, microblogging, and all the other wonderful things that you can do using the Web these days.
You could choose to believe all that hype online today and you could decide to start using Twitter or Facebook or Tumblr or WordPress or fill-in-the-blank this very afternoon. All of those are merely tools to help you interact with other people. The most important word in that sentence is the sixth word—tools.
You may have heard that wise old say about using the right tool for the job. If you are like me and at one time or another you may have tried to remove a nail tightly inserted into wood by using a pair of needle nose pliers, well, you know what I mean here.
Buying running shoes will not make you successful at running. Buying into social media, blogging, microblogging and whatever will not make you successful at using the Internet for marketing. That simple truth is right in front of most peoples’ eyes today. Ignoring that simple truth is so easy to do because of the sexy promises being made about the hottest new social media channels.
Because I understand that simple truth, I can save you a lot of money and wasted time. I can advise you about how to use the right tool for the job when the job is using the Internet for marketing.