I am rethinking my approach to social media marketing and the amount of time I spend on it.
Since the beginning of the year I have been looking at ways to cut it back. I have wondered about the effect that this might have on my business.
Twitter is a good case in point. Even though much of my Twitter activity has been automated with the use of a tool-Buffer-I still question the time spent on loading Buffer with scheduled tweets.
The funny thing is I know now how to grow a following on Twitter: replying to the tweets of others. But I do not think I am prepared to do this. In fact, I am nearly certain.
So how I will use Twitter in the future remains up in the air, save for one thing: using Twitter for research.
As for the other social media platforms I am wondering about the need for a presence on as many sites as I am on.
I watched an interesting video over the weekend on Ian Brodie’s website. It was a video which was part of a series dealing with creating your own online course.
Ian has interviewed a number of persons who have created their own course and is picking their brains. It was the interview with a chap called Paul Minors which got my attention.
Paul Minors sells productivity courses online. But in the course of the interview, he said ‘I am not on social media’.
He went on to explain that his customers are persons looking for a solution to a problem. Time management, overwhelm, productivity. And those persons search for a solution on YouTube and Google, the search engines.
So, Paul Minors concentrates his efforts on Google and YouTube and does not do social media.
This got me thinking. Is the time spent on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn wasted time? Or is there a middle ground between serving those looking for solutions, wasting time brand building with vanity metrics on social media sites, and brand building which will pay off later when someone needs my services?
These are the types of questions any small business owner needs to continually consider. Time is money, especially when you are a one man or woman band or ‘solopreneur’ nowadays.
The jury is out for me at the moment. But I will consider these questions carefully over the coming weeks, as I always, have done, and tweak and iterate, if necessary.
How about you?