First I want to touch on why social networking sucks for growing a business, well actually SOME businesses.

Let’s think about it, what do we call it? Social networking. Not business networking, but social.  Social networking can work for your business if you are selling something that people need once a year, or even every day. Lots of people, various people. Take for example one of my all time favorite semi-fast food joints… Rubio’s.

Rubio’s is into social networking. Maybe not as deep as some companies, but they do let me know when it’s tuesday and I can cash in on $1.25 fish tacos… not that I do every Tuesday, but it gives me the option of chowing down for cheap every once in a while. Their postings do something else other than promoting a sale; Keeps Rubio’s top of my mind.

I know that SN (Social Networking) can work for restaurants, beverage makers, large department stores, and so on… but for the little guy wanting to garner attention on a national stage, well… it just SUCKS.. It sucks time away from real marketing… please, let me be specific.

Let’s say you are a freelance writer, or an actor… or maybe even a voice actor. You’ve heard that using twitter, or facebook will help you get some well deserved and needed attention.  And you know what?  ‘They’ are right. Who is ‘they’? Not sure really, but lots of people are pushing for small biz or freelancers to get into twittering, FB’ing and even blogging.  That will get some people paying attention to you… but who are they?

Here’s the question that should pop to mind when you are aproaching any kind of marketing. Who is your audience. Simple.. Direct.. who are you targeting?????

How many people who are in your SN really care about the editing job you did on that script, or the play that you got into, or what narration or audiobook you are doing now???  VERY FEW I would think.  And those who are interested, are not at all interested in being bombarded with your comments on how many auditions you did, what you are writing about now, or what national commercial you just did a tag for. (For those who don’t know, the tag on a commercial is the last 5-10 seconds usually, that give out info such as a phone number).

Social networking most likely doesn’t get lots of leads to people.  To be honest I do not consider much content coming out of SN to be serious enough, or professional enough to take a closer look at.  I’m probably wrong on lots of levels, but social online networking has never led to anything profitable in a business sense for me or most people I know.

If you want to grow your business, Market using tried and true methods.  They aren’t tired, they aren’t new, but they work… and you will work hard, and you will get tired… but real marketing will pay off.  Marketing requires planning, well thought out campaigns, researching your audience, solid execution and a circle around back to planning and so on..

I’ve got more thoughts on why social networking sucks! But this is by far the low hanging fruit on why SN sucks when you are trying to grow a business…

Please don’t let me discourage you from using whatever means you can to get your brand, message or whatever out there. But hopefully you will look at SN for what it is, and what it is not… your perspective may vary…