I recently attended the 2-day BizJam Seattle 08, a Small Business Networking Conference here in Seattle, WA. The first day was heavily focused on online social networking, everyone was told they should be blogging, flickring, youtubing, podcasting, videocasting, connecting, sharing, bookmarking, reading, feeding and tweet… tweet… twittering. But should they? (for those of you still asking “what’s Twitter?” – read this.)
I love the internet. I commonly joke to people that the reason I chose web design as a profession is simply for an excuse to spend my whole day online. (it’s funny cause it’s true.) I understand that not everyone holds such a warm spot in their hearts for the the interwebs – that’s part of the whole idea of CMD+Shift Design. You can be cool, do what you love and grow your business, I’ll be nerdy, do what I love and help you in growing said business.
So if the idea of writing a new blog post once a week sounds like a fate worse than death, you just flat out shouldn’t do it. Don’t force it! If you’re not passionate about it, you’re unlikely to create anything interesting and where is the value in that? CNET’s Molly Wood can give you “Five reasons social networking doesn’t work“ and John C. Dvorak points out the pitfalls in online schmoozing, “Business Networking Systems, Dead Already?”
Now I’m not saying to just forget about the online community all together. You have people to connect to. Reach out! You’ve got customers, colleagues, friends, family, people who can help you, and people that you can help, you just have to find them. The good news is that you have a ton of options on where to look. With all these options, you’re sure to find one, or two or three, or ten social networking resources that tickle the internet nerd in you. So to make your search for that site a little easier, check out some of these links:
- Top 10 Social Networking Sites for Women
- Social Networking for Readers
- 16 Social Networks for Pet Lovers
- Ten great photo sharing websites
- Top 10 hospitality travel sites
- Rock On: 12 of the Best Music Social Networks
- Top 50 Video Sharing Sites
- The list of great social networks for designers
Hi Liz,
it was great meeting you at BizJam!
As a social media consultant, believe it or not, I agree with you. If people are too harried, too stressed, hate to write, etc. maybe they shouldn’t be blogging. Plus, there are so many different types and kinds of social media one can leverage. Soc. media and soc. networking strategies shouldn’t be one size fits all–every business and every entrepreneur is different :-)