Before you launch that social media project or campaign, remember, start with the basics:

1. How are you going to make money?
2. Who is going to buy from you?
3. Where are your prospective buyers hanging out (both on-line and off-)?
4. What kind of content do they respond to? What kind of questions are they asking that you can provide answers to?
5. What’s working for you RIGHT now?

Once you’ve answered some of these questions, you can work on putting systems in place. But you still have to ask a few more things:

• How are we going to measure/track your progress?
• What marketing materials are already in place and what do you need to create?
• How will you capture and create new business from the information that you gather from prospects? How will you manage and grow your database?
• Who will play an active role in these processes? (Just you or will you hire an assistant? If you’re hiring, what systems do you need to create to monitor progress and hold them accountable?)
• How are you going to education yourself (now and over time) to be successful in using social media in a business sense?

You don’t become an overnight success using social media in your daily business practice. It takes a good deal of effort and strategy over an extended period of time. But lay the right foundation and put the right systems in place and you’ll probably have successes sooner than later.

What am I missing? Is there something you would add in running your own social media campaign?

[Flickr Photo by: Stefan Baudy]

This is the most common excuse that people give for not starting a blog or investing time in social media. Here’s my response to that: There’s always enough time if you spend it properly.

You don’t have to quit your day-job. Invest in your project (your new blog) after hours. This is the kind of passion Gary Vaynerchuk talks about in his book. Skip watching tv. Don’t play any video games (or whatever other distracting activity). Instead of going to bed at 10 or 11pm, go to bed at 12am. You don’t need to pull an all-nighter or anything. What we’re looking for is just a few extra hours a week to write and engage via our social networks.

Give it two – three weeks. Heck, give it a whole month. Squeeze out an hour or two Monday through Friday in the early morning or late at night. Do that for a month and you’ll discover soon enough whether social media is a resourceful marketing avenue for you or just another fad (a passing phase). And if it is just a passing phase, well, it’s back to work as usual. You didn’t lose anything other than a couple of hours (no big deal).

The point is this… If and when you want something bad enough, you make the time. If you don’t want it bad enough, and most people don’t, you use time as an excuse. You need to stop making excuses.

A Word About “Perfect Timing”

There’s no such thing. To quote a favorite book of mine from 37 Signals:

You’re always too young or old or busy or broke or something else. If you constantly fret about timing things perfectly, they’ll never happen. – Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

So, what’s stopping you?