This Social Media Stuff Is Actually Pretty Easy

(Social Media is so easy a Caveman could do it! – Photo by Don Hankins)

We like to make social media difficult to understand. We like to keep creating new shiny toys, sites and systems and the new one always seems to come out just when you got the hang of the “old thing.”

Bloggers that blog about social media and marketing experts like to complicate things that should be relatively easy. Social media is all about, ironically, being social. You know listening to and talking to other people in a social environment. The Internet has just changed the location, not the message.

Platforms are relatively easy to learn. Many of them create their sites with usability in mind – that is, they build their software thinking that grandma may have to one day use it. And if you cannot figure out the technology, there is a blog, a video, a podcast and a Twitter account for that too.

Social Media One Day At A Time

When we talk with companies now, our first conversation is about their communication with their clients, customers or fans. How do you currently communicate with them? What kinds of things do you talk about? What type of questions do they ask you?

Then we ask if they think this is the same kinds of things people may want to know about online?

The answer is usually yes.

The next step is to get these conversations online, where we can track them and use them to grow our business. These conversations are now public and thus others can enter the conversation without ever having to speak with one of your employees in person or visiting your office. How cool is that?

To get started we have our clients start one-day-at-a-time. Can you write one blog post that will help your customers in some way today? Can you sum that up in a few paragraphs, maybe a picture or two?

The answer is usually yes.

Keeping Up With Social Media Is Time Consuming

Yes, it can be if you let it. If you get caught up in Twitter or Facebook or watching YouTube videos, then yea it takes up a good portion of your day that could be spent calling new business, closing sales or making your product better.

If you create a system, pull RSS feeds, build brand management systems , follow alerts and have a plan of attack, then it becomes not only manageable, but you will start to see the overall quality of your online brand increase.

This whole process can be extremely difficult to manage if you are a large brand like Coca-Cola. However if you are a mom and pop business, you can get away with things like Google Alerts , Tweet Beep and a nice filtered Google Reader . It’s like clicking the Easy button from Staples.

So Get Started Already

If I am saying that this is easy, then why are you not getting started? Fear is one of the biggest obstacles to success in anything in life. From being scared of failure at little league to fear of posting a comment on a blog. Once we get over this initial fear, everything starts to fall into place.

Start being social again. Have fun. Do the things you do in your normal routine of talking with customers, prospects and fans, but do it online. The technical stuff can be taught (or even outsourced). What can’t be taught or outsourced is how you talk, interact and provide insight into your business. This is the true power of social media, and really, its pretty easy!

Greg Rollett is a Rock Star Internet Marketer from Orlando, FL. He blogs about Lifestyle Design and Online Marketing.