Before you ever dip your toe in the world of social media and online marketing, you’d better know what consumes you. What will you obsess over. What do you want to be doing the day you die.
I did a great seminar a couple of nights ago for a group of brand-new business owners who were interested in getting involved in social media. We had about 120 minutes to spend together. What I spent most of my time on was not the technicalities of creating a Facebook page or how you should create your Twitter profile or your LinkedIn profile. As new business owners, it was very important for me to communicate to them that there are some other things you should be doing first in social media.
One of the first thing you should be doing before you ever think about getting involved in any of those social media sites is to make sure you have your own website and your own email list. Most of them didn’t, so I talked about how you can go to the resource page at JustAskPatrick.com and click on “Patrick Recommends”. There I give you some links as to how you can get a free email list and how you can get a website and a domain name for next to nothing.
Probably the most time was spent on emphasizing to them how important it was to first find what they really want to do for the rest of their lives. A lot of us have jobs that we may have just fallen into after just getting out of college or high school, or some people have a job and they think, “You know what? I’m eventually going to do what I find interesting. I don’t have time to do it now, but I’m going to eventually find it.” I told them that before you ever get involved with social media, you need to figure out what you want to do and then get your ship heading in that direction.
People use social media to communicate a lot about their company, about their business, about what makes them different. Occasionally you’ll find someone who is really passionate about what they do and how they do it. It’s something they want to talk about from when they wake up at 6:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night. If you can find that job, if you can find that career, if you can find that kind of day and that kind of occupation, then once you decide to get into social media, people will be able to see that you believe in what you’re talking about, and your passion, your belief and your conviction will come across in social media.
So, before you ever decide to make videos like you see me doing, or hop on Twitter, or get on a Facebook page, make sure that you’ve really figured out what it is that you want to do. Once you get that figured out it will come across in everything you do and your passion will just ooze out for people to see.
That was important information for that group of new business owners to know. It’s important information that I want you to know.
