Re: Social Media

Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter... there's one major mistake that I think most people have when they plan to use these sites for "marketing".

The sites are intrinsically designed to make it easy for you to tell people about yourself... what you are doing, your interests, your rants and raves. Some people think that's what marketing is... telling people about yourself.

But marketing isn't about YOU. It's about the customer. It's about their story. Your part is just a supporting role. If Marketing were "Star Wars", you want the roles of "Obi Wan Kenobi" or even "R2-D2" - not Luke Skywalker. It's the customer that should be playing the starring role, not you.

I use all the sites mentioned above (well, I don't tweet so much, but I have a placeholder account anyway). But I don't expect Facebook to be my main tool for marketing, just as I don't have any family members as LinkedIn connections. I don't expect any of my clients to care that "Tim is taking the kids to McDonalds" and I don't expect my family to care that "Timothy has 14 years of experience in high end corporate media production".

You can get gigs as a result of your online presence, particularly when it's in a virtual space that is focused on a specific subject matter. I have deposited checks that prove that point.

But like any marketing effort, smart entrepreneurs don't rely on just one avenue or "channel" to get their business message out. And if you really want to use social media to draw business, it's all about finding the right mechanism to get to the right message to the right audience.

Find out where your target audience is and what they want, then go there and give them that.