Like many other small businesses, we’re currently very active in building our contacts for a new business drive. Even if they’re not actively involved with Facebook, Twitter and the like, most small businesses are aware of their existence and that the pressure is always on to start, or to join yet another forum, largely because we believe that everyone else must already be there.
Personally, I think that we as a company, need to resist the temptation. Around three months ago, we decided to take the plunge, adding a BT Tradespace presence, a Twitter page and the occasional Enterprise Nation article and community forum contributions to the Blog and Re-View pages on our own main site. Doing this properly means having to write an average of 10-15 articles a month, of varying lengths. Most of the time it’s a pleasure (as it should be) and not a chore, because we should (and we do) write on the issues that genuinely interest us and motivate us to comment.
Imagine though, multiplying this article-writing activity by a factor of 2 or 3, as some people appear to do. This could mean spending all of our time feeding what would become an online social networking monster, instead of talking to people in the ‘real world’ who could more easily become real clients.
Hopefully we’ve got the balance about right, because writing articles is still very much a pleasure. Let’s see if we can keep it that way.