There are a couple of things that have happened over the last couple of days that have inspired me to write this post. I’m going to apologise in advance if it sounds preachy – it’s not meant to, but it might!!!

First off, my birthday! It was a bit of a mad day so I didn’t really get to celebrate until yesterday! Husband brought my presents to me and kiddies of the younger variety helped me open them! One which looked particularly inviting was an A4 sized, thick one…. Until I opened it – that is!! A book on the art of SEO!! Immediate thoughts were – a) how romantic!! (not very!) and b) (this is the important one!) I know I’m not up to speed with SEO and if I’m interested in doing this well, I would either seek advice from an expert or employ them to do it for me! Why do I need a book?

Secondly, we’re currently having a weekend away to celebrate said birthday and wedding anniversary, staying in a cottage belonging to a colleague. Tonight, the saniflo basin stopped draining away as the pump no longer kicked in , so I had a bit of a mad panic, blamed the kiddies for all sorts of things and then rang my colleague (turns out that youngest had flicked the switch off!). Meantime though, hubby (he of the book present notoriety) had started to look the technical problem up on the internet!! Incredulous, I asked why. Apparently, it was brutally obvious (this weekend isn’t the most successful ever so far, you’ll gather!!) – he was planning to fix it himself if he could! Double incredulity!! Is he an electrician? NO Does he know about electricity? NO  Does he know about Saniflo? NO.

And yet, there he is, all prepared to have a go at fixing it!! And not even in our house!! Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? Thank goodness it was only the switch!

Bit of a lesson here I thought, about calling in the experts. But also, a difference in approach! I know which is the pathway to potential disaster and which the one to success. I’m not sure that my nearest and dearest do.

This lesson is relevant to every aspect of business life, potentially, but I was thinking about it specifically in terms of social media. As it’s free to sign up to social media platforms and have a play and posts and articles about Twitter and Facebook are two a penny, some businesses and business owners appear to believe that they are experts.

It is scary to me to see how many businesses are out there on Twitter just blasting out information about themselves with no engagement whatsoever.  And then there are those trying to promote themselves on Facebook via a personal profile, or a very incomplete business Page again with no notion of talking to customers to find out their views. These businesses have missed the point. And I personally think that they are doing more harm than good to their brand and their reputation by acting in this way. I think that in these cases, it would be better for these businesses not to have a social media presence at all than to have  a bad one.

If it were me, I’d want to go to an expert. Most social media managers would be happy to have a chat about where you’re going currently with your presence on Facebook. Twitter and LinkedIn and how you could improve on this. I certainly love being approached in this sort of way as I love sharing best practice. So, you could be getting an initial assessment of your current activity free of charge.  Why aren’t you taking it?

Furthermore, you could  employ a social media manager to handle all either all your activity or just specific campaigns. How fab would that be, not to have to worry about  having to carry out that side of your marketing anymore? Why would you want to tackle it in a half-hearted sort of way, rather than knowing your presence will be confident and friendly , knowledgeable, but not overbearing? You would obviously be in ultimate control of what was said, but you would know that , technically and personally, it would all be being done in the right way.

I know which approach I’d rather take? How about you?