Social Media Marketing Vs. Traditional Marketing - Entrepreneurial Learning Curve

Published by John Hoff on 22 Sep 2008 at 02:38 pm

Building A Business Through Social Media Vs. The Old-Timer’s Way To Business Success

We all know the economy sucks. We hear it in the news, we read about it in print media, and we read about it online.

I see shows on MSNBC and CNBC with people arguing with one another about how to better our market and we see experienced entrepreneurs shelling out helpful advice to help your business grow.

Then I get online and read articles and blogs which teach us about the effectiveness of social media marketing and how many people use this as their only means of marketing and building their business.

For example, they leverage social media sites like Digg, Stumble Upon, and del.icio.us to help drive “targeted” traffic to their site. Another idea is to comment on other people’s blogs in order to get other bloggers to comment on your blog as a strategy to get your website noticed and talked about.

With so much noise trying to give direction in this sour market, I can see how it might be difficult for an entrepreneur starting a business try to figure how to either start a new business or save their existing struggling one.

With the Internet comes a whole new wave of business possibilities and marketing techniques and it’s easy to get caught up in spending way too much time online. Sites like problogger.net and Dosh Dosh offer great Internet marketing and blogging tips.

That’s great, read those and expand your knowledge. But try not to get too caught up in the success of a few of these sites which rely heavily on social media marketing only. There is a lot to be learned from those who did business before the Internet was ever even conceived of.

Lately, I’ve been concerned that new web entrepreneurs growing up in the information age are forgetting the lessons learned by their predecessors and are getting too comfortable sitting at home in their PJs while they “work”. Entrepreneurs back in the day had to do everything by hand. They had to get out and network and actually pickup a pen and write on paper.

They knew what it took to build a successful businesses from the foundation up to generate wealth; and they weren’t lazy (well, some might have been).

In my next post later this week, I want to talk about how blown out of proportion I think social media marketing has become. It’s the new fad, the in thing to do, and lets us be lazy and work from home.

I’d be willing to bet if we were to interview 500 highly successful entrepreneurs at random, most of them don’t work from home in their PJs spending a majority of their time blogging and using social media. Not that there’s none, but few.

Following the next article on social media we will take a look back at how things were done before the Internet and what we can learn from our predecessors.

So here’s a couple of questions for you to ponder. How much time do you put into social media marketing for your business? Are you blogging for business or pleasure? Is your blog a tool for your business? How much time and effort can you afford to put into one tool for your business?

Share And Enjoy

Entrepreneurial Learning Curve

7 Comments

7 Responses to “Building A Business Through Social Media Vs. The Old-Timer’s Way To Business Success”

Mere
on 23 Sep 2008 at 6:13 am #
Yes, I blog and send email newsletters. But my most successful marketing actions this year - sending packets of information to new prospects and hand-written thank-you notes to customers and clients. A combination of the old and the new seems to be most effective.

Mere’s last blog post..Expert Witness Expenses
T Edwards
on 23 Sep 2008 at 9:42 am #
Hello
This is a great post. As an “Old School” entrepreneur and a new blogger, I am very interested to see how blogging and web business models change over the next few years. From what I gather, it takes A LOT of work to sit at home and make any significant money from an online business. Getting out and pounding the pavement may not fit the internet business plan but there is definitely a need for a lot of behind the scenes marketing, development, programming, monitoring, revising, etc to build a successful online business. I have been bombarded with so many programs and ebooks for sale and the majority of them are junk. It seems that all the emphasis and work has gone into ONLY social marketing of the site/blog/product and NOTHING into the actual product itself. Many blogs don’t even post original content, instead relying on recycled posts found on the web which are then marketed via social networking sites. I choose to spend the bulk of my time trying to produce good content.

Talk to you soon

T
John Hoff
on 23 Sep 2008 at 2:04 pm #

@ Mere - I completely agree, a good combination is key. And it’s funny you mentioned sending packets, we’ve been working on doing there here at eVentureBiz. Not long ago I signed up for a service online and shortly after I received a “Welcome” package in the mail and was quite impressed.

Needless to say, in the near future we’ll have something like that here.

@ T Edwards - I LOVE your website’s tagline: The Definitive Guide To Becoming, Being, and Staying Flat Broke

I’m like you. I’m an old school entrepreneur that looks for creative ways to make a profit (see my real estate investing posts) and I’m also a relatively new blogger (about a year). A successful entrepreneur needs to develop their product, come up with a great plan, and put it into action.

I feel like many of these social sites lately are giving new entrepreneurs the impression that developing and running a business is easy and you can sit at home in your PJs running a highly successful business.

Possible? Some do it, yep. But for the majority of people, no. More to come……

Thanks for the comments
Barbara Swafford
on 24 Sep 2008 at 12:21 am #
Hi John,

Social media, although I know a lot of people use it, confuses me. Maybe it’s because I haven’t taken the time to learn how it works and how to use it to my advantage.

Our real life business is built with the “old” methods. We don’t have a website (although it’s a thought), and some of our business deals are still done with a hand shake (shhhh!).

I blog, but not for our business, nor do I promote our business on them. I do know of a blogger in England who uses his blog as a business tool and it has served him well. He has an IT business, so that may make a difference.

Barbara Swafford’s last blog post..Sometimes Thank You Is Not Enough
Cath Lawson
on 24 Sep 2008 at 3:34 am #
Hi John - I think there definitely has to be a balance. I’ll confess - I haven’t put heaps of effort into marketing my blog, even though I’m a marketing junky. But I will be now, as it is part of my new business marketing strategy.

But relying solely on social media can be dangerous and some blogs have done that. And i noticed their alexa rankings have suffered as a result. Trouble is with social media marketing - your stuff doesn’t have to be that good to get voted. Folk will vote on a post on a popular site, on StumbleUpon just because they know other folks will stumble it too. And if you’re the first person to “discover” a popular post, your own website shows up in SU more.

I will use some social media marketing but will also be doing plenty of more “old fashioned” stuff too.

Cath Lawson’s last blog post..Free Gift Ideas That Help You Sell More
John Hoff
on 24 Sep 2008 at 8:51 pm #

@ Barbara - You might not fully grasp Digg and other sites like that, but you definitely have the blogging part down. Blogging is definitely a social media marketing tactic. I’m curious, what are your goals with Blogging Without A Blog? Is it more a personal site or do you see it as an income generating business?

Hand shake? No website?? My lips are zipped! heheh

@ Cath - I know you know your marketing and are kind of reorganizing things for yourself and business so it’s understandable that you have to take steps. I’m sure you have a long laundry list of things to do.

I’m with you on the “old fashioned” stuff. In my next post I spotlight Craig Newmark of Craigslist and how he doesn’t limit himself and his business to social media tactics only. He gets out and gets his picture taken and wears a suit at times.