Solopreneurs & Social Media Marketing

If you’re a one-person company, you already wear a lot of hats.  you do all of the sales, marketing, networking, operations, billing and bookkeeping.  You may have some help here and there – perhaps from an assistant or a contractor – but for the most part you’re on your own.  And now everywhere you go, social media expectations are thrust upon you.  You feel pressured to “do it all” or else feel like you’re falling behind the competition.  Some entrepreneurs feel so overwhelmed that they don’t know where to start, so they do nothing at all.  Others dive right in only to find they are in over their heads and then they bail out – leaving partial LinkedIn profiles and abandoned Facebook pages in their wake.

Larger companies have marketing departments or at least one person whose job is dedicated to marketing, including online marketing.  Solopreneurs don’t have that luxury.  They need to find the time in their already busy day to fit in social media.

Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.  I recommend that you start slowly.  Choose one social media venue that fits your business strategy and reaches your target market.  Choose one and do it well.  Whether it’s blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or something else, you can have success with social media by finding the right fit.

Some aspects of social media can be outsourced.  You can hire someone to install and customize your blog, set up your Facebook business page, or create a template for an email marketing campaign.  But I don’t recommend outsourcing it all.  Remember social media should be “social.”  It’s all about creating and maintaining relationships.  A hired constant can’t connect with your customers the way that you can.

But a social media consultant can provide training to get you up and running faster with social media.  They can help you to learn the technology so that you are more comfortable using it.  An experienced consultant will make it easier for you to stay on track with your social media strategy by providing you with the right tools to help monitor your social media conversations.   They can even tell you how to automate updates to all of your social media platforms at once.

Taking it one step at a time helps to take the pressure off of you.  Ask for help when you need it and learn which tools can make it easier so that you can actually enjoy it!