One of the reasons Hal & I created the concept of BuzzBuilderz was the hesititation I observed from people who had heard about Blogging and knew that there were potential business benefits, but had no idea what they should do. Because they were generally business people who had embraced Web 1.0 marketing techniques over the last few years, and had conventional wisdom about how that worked, this new les structured form of communication seemed to be confusing, and like most business people, when something confuses them they stop acting and start investigating.
The problem with investigating the new frontiers of Social media is that there is no easy roadmap for the uninitiated. People who heard about MySpace, or LinkedIn don’t understand how those networks might interface with FaceBook (no pun intended) and the whole concept of Twitter completely passes them by, and places like MyBlogLog or FriendFeed are a complete mystery.
Having learned about marketing through the more traditional techniques used in building my real estate business, I saw the similarities of the social media network to the old physical forms of networking that have been embraced for so long by so many businesses, and felt that if an individual or a company was presented with the structured interconnections that BuzzBuilderz creates, they would find their comfort level by utilizing the tools and seeing the effects of their efforts.
Part of our thought process was to provide a variety of places for the user to communicate with their network and to find a larger audience through common interests, believing that through the observation of the effects of their actions, and a choice of places to communicate (as well as a variety of things to communicate about) the mere exposure and action of the user would increase their effectiveness in a painless manner.
Since I love to be right, I was thrilled this morning to see on my FriendFeed a link to a blog called “You Don’t Have to be PERFECT, you just have to start” which makes exactly the point that Nike did in their famous Just Do It commercials. Do something , even if its not perfect, is better than waiting to do something, because we learn more through action than we do from contemplation. Though there are a ton of mistakes that we can make in our Social Media marketing, usually they won’t result in someone poking their eyes out. And at BuzzBuilderz, our users will at least avoid some of the most common errors in creating their online brand, becuase Hal & I learned what they were by trial and error.
Putting aside the obvious cautions against saying things that you might later regret, or saying things that might create legal issues, I would suggest that the biggest posible mistake that anyone can make in this arena is the mistake of not participating. Like the lottery slogan “If you don’t play, you can’t win”. So get involved. Start reading and interacting and watch the world unfold beofre you. the possibilities may not be endless, but they’re a much larger number of possibilities then most of us can comprehend.
Tags: Facebook, freindfee, mybloglog, myspace, nike, Social Media, Twitter
