Social media is a double edge sword for business owners and marketers

Posted by Adam Franklin

Is social media a double edge sword for business?

In today’s video, I explain why social media is a double edge sword for business owners and marketers.

Two thing to do (and 3 things to avoid)

• 2 things to do with social media: Create and Connect.
• 2 things to avoid: Consuming and Criticising. And a bonus third one… avoid Comparing.

It’s easy but not very productive to (over)Consume, Criticise and Compare. It’s lots more valuable but also a bit harder to Create useful content and Connect with people.

TRANSCIPT:

Hello, it’s Adam Franklin here.

Today’s topic for this video is why social media can be a double-edged sword for business owners and marketers. You see, in my experience there are two things that social media is wonderful for that the business owner or the business marketer or the thought leader or whatever you want to call it, that only they can do.

Then there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that actually other people can help you out with. I’m going to outline those today. There’s also two things that are a real killer for marketing and business owners.

Now, let’s start with the two things that business owners and marketers, especially if you’re in a high trust relationship-based business. Let’s look at the two things that really I believe only you can do, so this can’t really be outsourced.

#1. Don’t Outsource Relationships

The first is the connections that you form on social media. LinkedIn and Facebook and even Instagram, okay? As a person, you don’t outsource your relationships and on social media the networks that you have are a digital representation of your real life network. So form connections yourself and make sure that that’s something that you take seriously and that you do yourself. Okay?

#2. Don’t Outsource Thought Leadership Content Creation

Now, the second thing that people should do them self is the content creation. As long as it’s your ideas, that’s the thing that counts. If somebody else edits it or ghost writes it or anything to help you, that’s totally fine. However, it really does need to be something that if you’re the business development person or the business owner or the marketer, be sharing some of those insights and knowledge and IP that you’ve got, because again, that’s not something that is easily outsourced and it really helps when it’s your own ideas that you’re sharing with the world.

They’re the two things that people should do themselves.

The content and the connections, because your connections are a digital representation of your actual network and the content that you share is a digital representation of your reputation. Because in real life, if you will, there’s lots of conversations that you have, there’s lots of meetings that you go to, and the information that you share and the conversations that you have in those meetings or phone calls, that’s how people form their perception of you and that’s how you build your reputation. But there’s only so many phone calls or meetings or conversations you can have in a day.

Social media offers scale

The beauty of social media is that you can share some of those insights from conversations that you have or meetings that you have and you can actually share them, like I’m doing in this video or like you can do by just publishing an article on your blog or your LinkedIn. You can share some of that stuff and reach a much greater audience. Don’t just keep your knowledge and IP boarded in behind closed doors or in private conversations. Share some of that useful stuff and reach a lot more people so that you’re staying top of mind and you’re growing your reputation and your profile through your social networks.

The double edge sword

Now let’s have a quick look at the things that are the real killer and the bad side of the double-edged sword with social media.

#1. Create don’t consume

The first is that social media makes it very, very easy just to consume content. If you’re consuming all day, then you’re not creating and you’re not connecting and it drags us away from the things we probably should be doing. So that is a big trap. Sometimes I find it’s good to just delete Facebook off my phone. I do these videos through the Facebook Pages app. I also put the Facebook News Feed Eradicator on my laptop so you don’t get sucked into that vortex of the newsfeed.

#2. Avoid Criticising

The second thing that is a big killer on social media and that is the fact that it’s easy to criticise. You don’t want to fall into that trap, although you see it a lot. People turn to the comments and they vent their anger and they criticise people, and there’s all this negativity and hate going on.

If you find yourself succumbing to that type of behaviour, then just realise that it’s so much harder to actually create stuff and form meaningful connections with these tools. It’s so easy just to default to consuming stuff and criticising other people, but it’s a lot more difficult, but a lot more rewarding and valuable, to be creating and connecting.

Let’s recap.

The things you should be doing, create content and connect with people. The two things you shouldn’t be doing on social media, consuming too much and criticising. If you’ve liked what I’ve had to say, give it some love, leave some comments down below, reach out to me. Just for those people overseas, I’ll just give you a quick view of where we’re at.

We’re just in Sydney Harbour today, a little bit bright, and you can see maybe just the top of the bridge over there.

All right, so that’s a wrap for today. If you found it useful, yes, leave a few comments, leave some love. There will be a link to my 33 free marketing templates in the comments or in the captions.  If you’re not a part of those, feel free to download them, they’re totally free.

We’ll catch you again soon. All right, bye.

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