A new customer wrote to me today to tell me that she doesn’t see a need for Twitter or blogging, and that she hates writing, which reminds them of “term papers”. She asked for my advice.
A snapshot from my response:
My opinion – technically, we don’t “need” any of this stuff. They all have their uses. If you have enough money to advertise, and can also hire a PR firm to create the necessary goodwill and press opportunities to get you where you need to be, who needs blogging?
It’s not a need, it’s an option.
It’s an option for people who want to
- directly reach their customers, instead of paying for advertising,
- reach them through relationship marketing and/or expertise marketing, while they are more open to whatever solution you want to present
shorten the sales cycle,- have better search engine traffic,
- have a new opportunity to rank for or maintain 1 – 11 additional search terms instead of just one,
- reach their peers for affiliate and JV opportunities in a highly effective manner, and,
- find new, more affluent clientele that are more willing to pay a premium price for the products and services you offer.
Now, some of that you can get with advertising. Some you can do with podcasting or Facebook. But there’s no where else you can get all of that in one place, at the price of your time (or a writer’s).
Actually you don’t need to write that well. If you can write an email, you can write a blog post. If you hate writing you can hire ghost bloggers, who take your ideas and turn them into blog posts. Or you can create an audio or video series.
To move on to Twitter – again, it’s not a need. It can help you get your blog posts, ideas and links in front of a wider audience doing keyword searches or looking to connect to experts at a low time and cost. But you can do that with YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Amplify, and now, Google+.
The key is to find one or two social media sites where you feel comfortable spending an hour or so each week, split into a few minutes throughout your day or in 15 minute blocks. Some of the major sites you can occasionally repeat the same content in, though not all the time.
There’s no law that says you have to do all of them, or any of them, really. But if you want the results that come with them, try thinking of them as business tools, and treat them accordingly.
I once had a friend who said they hated Twitter. I told her that she didn’t have to fall in love with it. She just had to determine if it had a use that applied to her business.
If you have advice for them, do share. 
I’m thinking of putting together a list of links about this subject.
