Social media marketing is much like mowing the lawn. You can often see the results immediately in followers, likes, and so forth, but you know that there’s still a distance to go. Here are some other similarities.
1. You Choose your Level of Engagement
You can pick your hand mower, one which does mow the lawn but takes a long time. You can get one of those self propelling mowers which does a little bit more, though is still time consuming. You can get a riding mower, one with all of the bells and whistles, which does the mowing still faster but requires a tidy investment for a good one. You can also choose to have someone else mow the lawn, allowing you to do other things.
With social media, there are plenty of services available. You can choose Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn, or any number of other networks and services. You can do all of the posting, tweeting, article writing, press releases, and more yourself. You can use an automated service like ping.fm or Onlywire to take care of some of the posting, picking and choosing where you wish to devote your time. You can fully automate these services, too, though you might be hard pressed to find something reliable and non spammy. Or, if you have the money, you can get someone else to do all of your social media marketing functions for you.
2. Immediate results
Depending on the type of lawn mowing that you do, you can see immediate results in your movements. When you’ve done only one row, you can see that the row is cut, but you know that you have more to go. Social media is similar, because you’re inevitably faced with the question of ‘what’s next’ after you’ve done your posting and tweeting.
3. Consistency
Unfortunately, your lawn grows back and your potential customers forget about you. You have to be consistent with your lawn mowing to present the best image possible. With social media, it’s recommended that you do at least one thing a day (or have someone else do it) to keep your products and services fresh within your prospect’s minds.
4. There’s Only So Much
Many new homeowners love to mow their lawns because it’s a sign of homeownership. In reality, there’s only so much that you can mow your lawn in any one go-round. Once it’s done, your lawn is good for another week or two while the grass returns.
In social media, you might have the urge to do absolutely everything at once. You might want to post every single day, market that post, and do all of your social media functions in a single day. This, like excessive lawn mowing, leads to burnout. There’s really only so much that you can do without tipping the signal vs. noise ratio.
5. Involvement
As to what you’re going to do? This depends on the level of passion that you’ve got for lawn mowing. If you’re really enjoying it, you’re more prone to do it yourself. If you love the way that your lawn looks by your own hand, by all means keep doing what you’re doing.
The same works for social media. Social networking is all about the people that you meet along the way. The tools that you use, regardless of what they are, are just tools. If you hate talking about your business and your products, let someone else do the talking (and the lawn mowing).
Both lawn mowing and social marketing have different levels of involvement and price points. When you choose the areas that you can do the most good, you will find that your social marketing (and your landscaping skills) will become more effective.
