Final Thoughts

Considering all that we've learned and reviewed over this quick semester of social media madness, I have a few summary learnings.

1.  There is always a new media bandwagon.  Ultimately, the decision on what media to utilize (traditional vs. online media) comes down to which media delivers your target audience best.  Social media has great targeting tools, but not everybody is on the social networks.  If you are looking for a 65+ rural male in middle America...my instincts tell me that social media is likely not the best media vehicle to reach that target.  Whatever your business is, you have to understand your target audience first, and determine what media works best for reaching them.

2.  Play to your strengths.  If you know you are not good at posting regularly and distributing content, don't attempt to keep up in those realms.  You'll burn out on content and the attempt to market your business will backfire because your social media tools are stale.  Hire someone to blog for you, or use other online tools that have less content demands - such as Google Adwords/Ad Network.

3.  First Impressions Count . If you go to the effort to build out a business Facebook page, or a website...make it quality.  If a customer goes to look at your page and it appears cheap, poorly constructed, or unprofessional...you are negatively marketing your brand.

4.  Face to Face Still Matters.  If you think you can build a website - pop up a Facebook page, run some Google ads and collect revenue without having to deal with people... you are wrong.  If you don't like dealing with people and that's your driver for an online business - prepare to be disappointed.  Businesses require customers, and for the vast majority of customers - they are expecting some level of personal interaction before they hand you their money.  If you have no desire to deal with people, get ready to spend a large amount of time defending your business on Yelp.  Business ultimately comes down to interacting with people - customers, suppliers, media and a host of other stakeholders.  Social media is a wonderful new medium, but nothing can replace personal interaction for customer acquisition and retention.

5.  Does the Real Business Match the Online Business?  On the personal social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook and Google +, all the personal content and postings we see are hyped up, trumped up interpretations of our lives.  People generally post the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff.  When we switch to using social media for BUSINESS, it's important to keep it real.  If you have a hyped up site that doesn't match the reality of your business (for example overreporting number of clients, hyping results, overstating claims of success)...it will catch up with you.  We can hype our personal social media, but in business...credibility and authenticity is built one satisfied customer at a time.  Be careful not to over-promise and under-deliver.

For me, I plan to keep it simple.  Invest in the social media platforms I feel comfortable that I can maintain momentum with.  It's a brave new world!  Thanks for the learnings.  N8