Prioritizing Your Time Online

Many people start in business trying to bootstrap their budget and their time.  There are so many things to do and only so much time to get everything done.  This leaves you making priorities and sometimes leaving things out.  Now a website is so vital, this should be your first priority.  Secondly, you need to decide on a platform to better relate to your customers in an informal way.  Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc… the list goes on for different platforms now-a-days, but you need to prioritize!

 

People are moving toward an easy means of communication, are they not?  For example, you could catch me walking down the street talking on my Bluetooth while I’m texting, Tweeting, and updating my Facebook status.  I will look for a remote for 10 minutes before I get up and change the channel on the TV.  I often wonder, “What my daughter will be doing in 10 years to make things more convenient than now?” 

I’d also like us to really think about what grabs our market’s attention.  Understanding exactly who your target market is and where they spend their time is very important to effectively spending the marketing dollars and your time as well! (When doing your business plan, be sure to spend significant time narrowing this down and understanding it!)  Now-a-days, Commercials on TV use humor, Facebook has fun games, and Blogs have useful information (hopefully).  Well, let’s look at some of the traits of Blogs and Facebook to see what’s fun, easy and effective.  Maybe this will help us prioritize.

 

I think of Facebook as more of a 360 degree marketing and communication tool while Blogs are more of a 1 way communication between a blogger and their audience.  The Facebook community allows you to receive updates from all of your friend’s lives and your favorite businesses.  Virtually everyone is on Facebook because it’s, “Fun, Easy, Convenient, and Free.”  While you create your own page, which by the way is pretty similar to a blog, you receive updates about your friends and businesses in the same platform.  Flip this around from a business standpoint.  All of your customer’s, which are your “Friends”, on Facebook receive an automatic update anytime you do anything.  This is great free marketing!  Where do you get this from a blog?

Blogs are unique because they are often updated daily or weekly and provide the customer with a fresh look.  They are uniquely different from a website because they are much more informal and provide the customer with your personality.  However, people continually have to check back to your blog to see new content.  Even if they are set up with an RSS reader, which few people are, this is not as easy, convenient, or fun for your customer’s like Facebook.  Furthermore, blogs don’t get the face time that Facebook does from your customer’s which takes away from the free marketing aspect!

 
In the end, I’m not trying to tell you that you shouldn’t do a blog or that they don’t serve a purpose.  I am trying to say that when prioritizing your time, you will likely get a much better return with time well spent on Facebook than a Blog.