For many small business owners, marketing is a necessary evil, pushed aside by urgent deadlines, everyday tasks, and an occasional crisis. It is one of those important, but not urgent tasks, categorized by Stephen Covey
Time Management Matrix
Let’s face it. Not every business owners is a born salesperson. This is especially true of service providers, who rely on their talent in a core competency to attract clients. The good news is that marketing is an acquired skill and you do not have to go to business school to learn how to do it. There is a wealth of useful marketing information on the internet and in books.
Following several choice business blogs is a simple way to pick up the necessary knowledge over time. While it might be difficult to implement a start-to-finish marketing strategy, you can decide to learn marketing in increments and apply this information consistently. In fact, marketing diva Fabienne Fredrickson says business owners must do something to market themselves every single day to escape the all too familiar feast-or-famine.
Fabienne’s fabulous blog is the first resource on my list of recommended reading.
The question that has always bothered me about social media is that even with RSS how do you prevent it from overwhelming your life. I am active in two groups, and semi active in linkedin. I do not yet have a blog. The more time I spend responding to other people’s posts, starting discussions, and making people notice me, the less time I have to do the actual paying work, which reduces my overall productivity. RSS helps save time, but reading and responding to half a dozen groups, + twitter + blogging can sometimes consume 3-4 hours of the workday. Also, RSS does not update you when people respond to your comments.
That’s the trick. You need to have a social media strategy and know how to control it (instead of it controlling you).