Social media might be daunting for some, as it was for me, but I have learned 
that it is a great source of leads, sales and referrals. I started out in a very clumsy way on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Linked In was a little easier for me because I'm a business person and it was easy to promote my business in that environment.
What I've learned over the past five years is that social media marketing and success takes time. Like any marketing, consistency is the key to success. Many years ago, I ran a local newspaper ad for my contracting company. We received about 33% of our business from that ad. Friends who were in the same business would ask how I received so much business from my simple ad?
They would run an ad for 30 days, get no business and quit. I watched them do that over and over with the same results. What they didn't realize at the time was that a newspaper ad took about 90 days to return results. They quit each time too early.
I've seen many friends do the same thing with social media marketing. I started with Facebook five years ago. I was with Twitter from its beginning. Linked In happened about 6 years ago. It took a few years before any of those sites sent me business. I didn't use them fully, but as I and the sites evolved, their value became more obvious.
Today, I market more fully through each one, and each one sends me business. It took years to get business through any of them, but now that I have, it is consistent. A number of times a year, a FB friend contacts me privately to sell or buy property. The same has been happening through Linked In.
Patience and consistency is the key to success in social media. Even if you don't see anything happening, don't assume it isn't. How many times have you bought a product you thought about for months or years? Consistency and patience are the keys to social media success.
This blog is part of the We Want To Hear Your Biggest Social Media Success Story .
Comments(10)