If someone hired me to write “The Ultimate Guide to Social Media for Business,” I would only need to write one sentence:
Don’t bother doing it.
LOL, that’s it for today’s post…I’ll be here all week!
But seriously, that one tip could make you millions of dollars.
Why am I so hard on social media? Cuz it’s an absolute time-waster.
At best, social media is just a doorway to contact individuals whom you might not otherwise have access to. At worse, social media is Ego on crack, on the internet!
You don’t need it for marketing purposes. If your goal is increased sales, then you definitely don’t need social media. It will just suck you down a black hole filled with useless conversations, trifling tidbits of information nobody needs, and ego-stroking.
It’s just another platform whose rules and guidelines you’ll have learn and navigate around. For what? A few retweets and likes?
In the online business world, your email list is where the money’s at. And where there’s money, there’s power. Your email list is where you derive true strength and power…not false power pumped up by Ego. For the serious home-based biz owner whose goal is growth, email is the only platform that matters.
Seems like everyone’s been suckered into thinking social media is where it’s at…so they waste hours posting shit that doesn’t result in sales.
But hey, at least they have more followers!
Facebook…Twitter…Instagram…Pinterest and whatever the hell else…as a business owner, you don’t OWN any of your social media accounts. Facebook owns Facebook. Facebook owns Instagram. Twitter owns Twitter. Google owns YouTube. (I’m sure some of this will change at some point later.)
Fact is, your social media accounts could be gone in the blink of an eye. Somebody could ban you or report you and poof… that “huge following” you worked so hard to acquire is gone in an instant.
Someone at headquarters could decide you violated their terms of service and delete your account with no explanation. An advertiser or “sponsor” could apply pressure to headquarters to have your account removed, because your content conflicts with the advertiser’s agenda. Or the entire platform could outright disappear and fade into the ether (like MySpace did), due to society growing bored with it.
Ya never know!
Like I said, REAL power comes from building your email list. THAT, you own! 100%.
Your email list, your websites, and your original content are the only things you own and have complete control over. In terms of marketing, your email list is the most valuable thing you own — even more valuable than your blog.
The second most valuable thing you own is a list of your customers’ snail mail addresses. Both of these — email and snail mail — offer you direct access to people who have already expressed interest in your products, or who might be good candidates for buying your products.
That said, you should ALWAYS be working to grow your email list…above all else. And you should email your list as much as possible.
Slapping social media gurus in the head with a wet noodle,
Michelle
Michelle Lopez Boggs is a copywriter, copywriting mentor, and author of "The Anti-Marketing Manifesto: How to Sell Without Being a Sellout." She's helped her clients sell millions of dollars' worth of products and services online by using the MEI(S) principle — motivate, educate, and inspire, and sell. 