Social Media Marketing Hard Truths for Your Business

We've been hitting the truth hard and fast about the work of using social media marketing to grow your business. The work of choosing platforms, writing relevant content, and finding the time to get it all done have made up our list so far. You can find links to the series so far in my author archive. As we've already covered, even though social media marketing is becoming more commonplace, in many respects, Social Media marketing is still a moving target with new platforms launching, changing, and exiting—daily. There are some MUSTS about Social Media use for growing your business. Here’s the next on my short, serious, unfiltered, truthful list. If last week’s post about the time warp of Social Media didn't scare you off, let’s move on to our fourth hard truth.

#4. GET A BLOG! Now. No matter what else you are going to do to engage clients or prospects with Social Media, you will need a universal home base to tie it all to. The almighty blog and the website that houses it (and yes, it should be on your website) serves as a great content generation hub and provides the location for your menu of Social Media options. Social media users want to easily connect and share your stuff. Having your social badges, links, and topics aggregated (Don't you love that word?) and organized for them is critical. Your blog serves as the one-stop shop for content and connection. While you're planning for your blog, consider limiting the topics and information to a specific theme or "voice." This will help users (and search engines) identify who you are and what you likely have to offer them that is beneficial. Blog posts make for great content to share across your other social platforms, and if carefully planned, can lighten the load of content creation and generation—re-purpose content. The blog needs to have content consistent with your social media marketing strategy and will take time to manage (see #3 and #2).