Archives for February 2019

If you are like most people, you’ve probably wondered more than once if social media really works?

Everybody is talking about how you need to be on social media, but you have tried everything and still have not seen results. Clearly you have doubts if this could really work for your business.

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to attend a presentation about the big problem that businesses have with their social media strategy.

The speaker compared the resources, effort and investments that business make when promoting themselves in radio and TV, in contrast to social media.

The speaker explained how businesses set aside a larger budget for marketing in radio and TV and much less for their social media strategies.

The presenter concluded that is precisely the problem, in other words, businesses do not recognize the importance of social media and do not set aside a proper budget for it.

I would like to take the opportunity to talk a little more about this topic and go deeper, because it does apply to both small and medium sized companies.

In my opinion that is not the problem, because it doesn’t matter who you hire or how much you pay someone to manage your social media strategy if you as a leader or project manager do not understand what this person needs to do, or how to measure their results.

It is pointless, if you do not understand the strategy and don’t have a clear vision of what you need to do to achieve success.

In other words, it won’t matter how much you invest in your social media strategy, or who you hire if you are not be able to tell if they are doing a good job or not.

If you don’t understand how to solve the problem then it won’t matter how much money you invest in solving the problem, I’m sure that you might be telling yourself: “I disagree. If I hired someone to do the job why should I be involved? The reason why I’m hiring them is because I don’t even have time and I don’t want to be involved.”

And that is exactly the problem.

I want to show you some examples of how, without realizing it, you might have made the mistake of trying to solve the problem by hiring someone without taking the time to understand the problem or look for a solution.

Does social media strategy really work? Avoid this critical mistake that will drive you to failure

1. You might have hired a website designer

You might have thought that after having a website you would have people lining up ready to pay for your services. But not understanding how the Internet works is what set’s you up with unrealistic expectations.

2. You might have hired someone to create content for your blog posts.

You probably heard that having a blog can help increase sales.

Writing has never been one of your strengths, besides you also have a business to run.

And that’s precisely why you decided to hire someone who has experiences but after 6 months you still haven’t seen results.

3. You might have hired someone to manage your social media strategy or maybe to create content for social media.

If you are like most entrepreneurs, there are not enough hours in a day.

Maybe you decided to hire someone to create content, to manage your social media strategy because you thought you didn’t have enough time to do it yourself, because in the end planning and creating content would take too much of your time.

Before continuing, I want to share an infographic that illustrates: Does social media strategy really work? Avoid this critical mistake that will drive you to failure:

The business or person created content but still, you don’t see any results.

4. You might have hired someone to create a promotional video

Everyone talks about the importance of doing videos for your businesses, and you thought you might give it a try and make a video to see if it really produces the results people talk of.

The video now lives on your website and you also post them on your social media, however, it doesn’t have any views and you haven’t received a call yet.

The reality is you are wasting your time when you’re doing all these things if you don’t have a strategy or if you don’t know who your audience is.

But you probably already know that.

The only way that these will work, is when you have total clarity over what you are doing and why you are doing it.

This is also the reason why when you copy your competitor’s content you are wasting your time.

The reason why they are getting results it’s because they have clarity and this cannot be copied or mimicked.

Regardless of how much money you invest in solving the problem, the results won’t change unless you understand the strategy and know exactly what to expect in each step of the process.

In the last few weeks I have noticed a word that you most likely using and without realizing it’s blocking your way to success.

Usually the word is hidden in a sentence like the following:

“I have seen how my friend is using the internet to make more sales, so I also want to try to see it’s going to work for me, so I’m just going to try and see what happens”

The word that kills your efforts is to TRY.

There are many issues with that sentence.

And to illustrate, I’d like to use an example.

I have very special memories of when I learned how to ride a bike and I also remember when my kids learned.

Learning to ride a bike is one of those magical things.

I’m sure fear varies depending on the age you learn to ride the bike.

But what is really incredible about learning to ride a bike is that we only learn how to do it once.

And once you acquire the skill it becomes something you do even without thinking about it.

However, it can be challenging when you don’t know how to do it.

Personally, I don’t know anyone who has tried to learn to ride a bike and then said, this is not for me, this is way too difficult or the bike goes too fast.

Because once you learn you can make adjustments and go as fast as you want and choose where you want to go.

Imagine if you will approach everything in life in the same way, with the certainty that regardless of the initial hardships or struggle, everything will work.

Online marketing is like learning to ride a bike, it’s a skill you learn that you can later use the rest of your life.

Let me show you what are some problems you think that online marketing is something you can just try once.

Why am I not making sales online (2 mistakes that are driving you to failure)

Mistake # 1: Everything in life has a cost

The first and possibly the most important problem is that everything in life has a cost, even when it’s not obvious and you do not see it.

What this means is that thinking that you don’t have anything to lose is not real.

I want you to consider some of the following costs:

• The cost of wasting time that you can never get back.
• The cost of stepping away from your goal because you are moving in the wrong direction.
• The cost of losing hope that online marketing is something you can do.
• The cost of not learning from mistakes.

And the worst cost of all is the cost of not solving the problem, which in this case is to sell more and attract more clients to your business.

Mistake # 2: Trying online marketing to see if it works.

The second problem is thinking that you can try online marketing to see if it works is the biggest trap.

There are certain decisions and things that we do in life, which we can’t simply try.

In our story, the person who is getting results and making more sales using the Internet, this person is not trying.

She is convinced that she needs to use the internet as a tool to grow her business, in the same way she would use a bike to go places.

Before continuing I have created an infographic that illustrates: Why am I not making sales online (2 mistakes that are driving you to failure).

 

In other words, to try is to fail.

When you use the word “try”, without realizing it, you are allowing your mind to have 2 options, success and failure and that is precisely what makes you lose the game.

When you decide to ride a bike, you do not do it to try, you do it with the intention that you will learn to ride it.

When you decide to get married, it’s not something that you do to see how it will go.

The same thing happens when you decide what to study in college.

We only get married or choose our college career when we are completely convinced that it is the right decision.

In conclusion:

Remember that to try is to fail, because you are letting doubt guide your decisions.

And the same applies to online marketing..

You need to have the conviction that it will work and you have to be 100% committed to yourself that you are going to do whatever it takes to make it work.

When you’re just trying something to see if it works, you are not going all in, you are not fully committed, you don’t have a plan of action, you usually improvise and just depend on common sense.

But I want you to realize that if it were only common sense what was needed, everyone would be successful and we know that it is not the case.

Eliminating the word “try” will allow you to conquer the doubt so you can always win.