![\"\"](\"http:\/\/jonhartley.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/suja-time-022.jpg\" "\\"me\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis blog post is a distillation of my knowledge about social media marketing. MY knowledge – not the information I have gleaned from other social media sources but rather the information I have collected in the real world through personal experience as a social media consultant and teacher.<\/p>\n
1. The most surprising people know next to nothing about social media marketing and are stuck in old ways.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Artists, actors, designers and publishers – people whose activities are generally supposed to be synonymous with ideas of forward thinking, the unconventional, the novel, the new – can be very conservative thinkers when it comes to marketing.<\/p>\n Few publishers or artists dream of starting up in business without a business card. Similarly most put a certain amount of valuable resources, both time and money – into brochures and entries in the yellow pages despite their expense and apparent ineffectiveness. When did you last look in the yellow pages, and brochures?<\/p>\n Many artists however are without a blog and have only a passing acquaintance with twitter despite the fact that both things are increasingly important tools for reaching and communicating with new audiences.<\/p>\n 2. For many social media marketing is an added burden to an already busy day that can not be accommodated<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n This kind of thinking is typical of those unable to know a paradigm shift when they see it.<\/p>\n Social media marketing is, as I have explained before, not free. It takes time – but not extra time. Time for social media marketing can be made by discarding conventional types of marketing.<\/p>\n e.g. Mailshots? Forget it. No more filling envelopes. Use that time more gainfully optimising your blog!<\/p>\n 3. You can lead a horse to water but…<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n You can not force people to get their blogs up and running before they are ready. it takes time for them to buy into how easy setting up a WordPress blog can be.<\/p>\n A certain amount of spoon-feeding is required to really get new social media marketers going.<\/p>\n Encouragement is important. If they can believe it works then they might just get blogging and tweeting.<\/p>\n 4. There’s way too much information out there…<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n …and not enough hard advice. My social media marketing workshops fill a spot in the market.\u00a0 People like to have the whole business reduced to a manageable model – blog in the middle, Twitter and Facebook or LinkedIn on the side.<\/p>\n They know they can refine and embellish their social media strategy as they go along because I tell them so. The important thing in the short term is that they get going!<\/p>\n 5. There are too few case studies of successful social media marketing initiatives for small companies.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n I need say no more. If you have any, then alert me to them.<\/p>\n 6. Six is not a common number of important points. Most bloggers like the five points or ten points plans, so I’ll stop here.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" All I know? This blog post is a distillation of my knowledge about social media marketing. MY knowledge – not the information I have gleaned from other social media sources but rather the information I have collected in the real world through personal experience as a social media consultant and\u2026<\/p>\n