There was a time when people said “You need to get a 1-800 number to do business!” There were businesses that didn’t get 1-800 numbers and some of them survived. A lot of them did. It turned out toll-free phone numbers were not the only way to do business.
- Having a storefront isn’t the only way to do business.
- Having a fax machine isn’t the only way to do business.
- Having a website isn’t the only way to do business.
- Having an instagram account isn’t the only way to do business.
- Selling pizza by the slice isn’t the only way to do business.
Mostly, I want to talk about social media here. We keep getting advice that we need our social media to be popping, but it’s actually impossible to keep up with all the major social media platforms if we’re solo or small operations.
Social media is helpful as a tool, but not necessary.
Social media is meant to be social. We are supposed to interact on social media. That means, we can’t just post something cool and hope that leads to work or fame. People make comments or reacts, we enter into dialog with them, we build relationships and that leads to work or fame. Relationships take jelly beans. We don’t have enough jelly beans to spend all day on all of the platforms.
What I recommend is finding a social network that is fun. I like spending time on Facebook, so I use that one. Because it’s fun for me, I can make it fun for other people to interact with me there. I can spend less energy and more time interacting with people there. I can build relationships there.
We gotta keep…
- creating stuff
- figure out a few channels to reach our audience
- dive in deep to the few things that work
- track progress and adjust
It’s a red flag
The main fear is that it would be a red flag to not have a following. I get it, but we we need to think about what our audience actually needs and we can determine what red flags are real for them. If I ran a video production company and we don’t have a youtube channel, is this a red flag? Not necessarily. If i have a way to share videos with potential clients without youtube, I could be killing it. Customers might be more interested in hearing how I could solve actual problems for them than whether or not I’m popular.
It could be a red flag to have a flagging following. If I’m trying to be a popstar and have an tiktok account where nobody is following, folks might realize I’m not cool.