I was speaking to someone the other day about the ‘advent’ of ‘Social Media Marketing’ and found myself saying “But Social Media Marketing is just what we’ve always done, isn’t it? Forums, mailing lists, groups of like minded people – we were doing these things 20+ years ago!”
And it’s true – or at least *I* think it is.
It’s sad to see so many people running scared of Social Media, worried they’ll get it wrong, worried they don’t know what they’re doing with this new and fancy technique of marketing their business / website. When really, it’s not that different to what most people have been doing all along.
In 1996 I didn’t take part in forums so much as email mailing lists and bulletin boards – a similar concept, just a little simpler. There was no Facebook, but there were social forums around that people used to promote their business as much as themselves. OK, so we didn’t have Twitter, but promoting yourself in your email signature was a big thing at one point.
What I’m trying to say is that Social Media Marketing isn’t a big and scary beast you can’t tame. It’s mostly common sense and thought, wrapped up in a little bit of planning and a lot of tracking.
You might not always get it quite right, and sometimes you might feel as if it’s a bit of a waste of time, but at the end of the day, if you can’t afford a so called ‘expert’ to help you, then trial and error is as good a strategy as any, in my opinion
