Positive Yarn

I recently came across an article whose headline alone — “Social media is like a gym membership” — reeled me in. It’s an apt metaphor for many small-business owners, including myself. After all, you may notice (or you may not) that this column is being posted on Friday, after several weeks of “training” my readers to look for updates on Thursday.

I can only offer up the same excuse that I give for why my gym bag is allll the way back in my closet, neat and undisturbed: Life intervened. There was no family emergency or crazy project deadline; it was just the everyday routines that I happened to not work my blog update into this week.

I suspect that many of you fall into this trap, too. You’re so busy with the day-to-day dealings of your professional and personal responsibilities that things like regularly logging into Twitter, Facebook and other technology wonders is pushed down to the bottom of the priority list.

The article’s author, marketing expert Paula Pollock, explores the similarities between the gym and social media further by profiling three archetypes: “Chatty Cathy,” “Pushy Pete” and “Multitask Mary.”

She ends by applying the 80/20 rule: “At the gym it means you can chat and socialize 20% of the time, but you better be working out the other 80% or you will not get results. Online, you should be engaging others, offering information and building relationships 80% of the time. If you do that, 20% of your participation can warrant invitations to your events or to check out your new offer.”

Less talking, more doing
Unlike the typical “I’ll hit the gym more” pledge solemnly sworn on New Year’s Eve, now’s the time to hit your online marketing resources, especially with the upcoming holiday season:

• Blog, tweet and otherwise tell about not only your sales, but your current charity projects, too. Encourage your online audience to participate. (For the record, mine is Jen Funk Weber’s Needle & ThREAD program, which actually continues through National Children’s Book Week May 10-16, 2010.)
• If you’re planning to raise prices soon, send out an email reminding customers that’s now the time to make purchases at the 2009 prices — and to take advantage of all your clearance items you offering to make room for inventory in the new year.
• Make friends and network online. My personal online hero is one Jenna Magee, owner of One Star’s Light Needlework Supplies and author of a pretty fabulous blog. My chapter-level EGA teaching debut this week wasn’t perfect by any means, but the fact that Jenna gave me permission to adapt her detailed photos and instructions for finishing a biscornu project into a handout made everything go much more smoothly. A week ago I didn’t know anything about her; a Google search and a couple emails later and I feel blessed to have made her online acquaintance.

How are you making online marketing work for you? I want to know! Share below or drop me a line at positiveyarn@goochandgooch.com.

Tags: biscornu, gym, Jenna Magee, marketing, One Star, Paula Pollock, social media

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 6:56 pm and is filed under Business marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.