I have been having several conversations recently with friends and lovely business owners I have met through networking groups about why people went into business in the first place and what they actually spend time doing now. The answer, time and time again, is that people generally go into business in order to do what they love.
And the reality? Is that the time most business owners get to spend on doing what they love gets more and more squeezed by all the other jobs they generally have to take on too. These days, a small business owner wears the hat of research and development technician, product, project and process manager, accountant, business case assessor, quality control assistant, marketing and PR expert, copywriter, customer account manager, sales person, plus day-to-day do-er of your business. How can we possibly a) do all these things? and b) do all these things well?
Are we trained and competent in all these areas?Would we have more success with them if we were? I would like to suggest that, in a number of key areas, were we to choose to use the services of an expert rather than struggle on ourselves then not only would we save an awful lot of time and stress, but we would also find that any outlay would quickly be repaid and more by increased custom and/ or efficiency gains.
This is so true of social media, isn’t it? There aren’t that many of us, really, who went into business as they wanted to spend hours behind a computer screen carefully crafting messages or searching out just the right sort of followers! And yet you can’t afford not to be using social media to promote your business these days. And I say ‘promote’ not anything else because that’s what it’s all about – putting in a strategy to promote your business, not to broadcast, spam, moan, badmouth or whatever. A little knowledge here really can be a dangerous thing as getting socail media influence wrong really can do more harm than good!
So why not cut yourself a bit of slack, admit that it’s OK not to do it all alone and invest in the services of a social media manager? I am sure your only regret will be that you didn’t do it sooner!