We need to have a heart to heart.

This social media thing is getting a bit out of control.

You’ll find lists and lists from “experts” about everything you “must” do or know or learn or use in [insert year] if you want to be successful.

Here’s the latest app you must use! Check out the new features on these social media posting tools! Messenger bots *are* the be all, end all! Design 3 funnels that come together into 1 email nurture sequence! Live stream webinars on Facebook! Learn the best way to repurpose your Instagram Stories to your Instagram feed to your Facebook Page to Pinterest to create instant newfound YouTube fame! 

It’s. All. Too. Much.

Now, don’t get me wrong. For some businesses and some industries, some of these things are properly categorized as a “Must Do”. But overall – especially if you are a small business owner or entrepreneur – try to block out all this excess pressure. It’s not helpful and it keeps you from staying focused on what really matters.

Let’s Get Back to Online Marketing Basics

First of all, I’ve always encouraged clients to do more with less. You don’t have to be on 5 social media platforms and use all sorts of fancy third party tools for images, posting, analytics and content curation. With a very small team to execute your online marketing strategy, trying to do too many things will leave you doing the bare minimum with each task. Doing the bare minimum on a platform – any platform – isn’t going to establish a presence there let alone “move the needle” in terms of sales. Keep your social media work simple by focusing on working 1 or 2 platforms really well. Learn the ins and outs of those couple platforms and put all the time you have to give to your social media presence to those couple platforms instead. You will see more growth and more return for your investment by focusing all your efforts on fewer platforms.

Next, we need to back up 1 step and talk about our websites. We’re all increasingly losing sight of the importance of strengthening the foundation of our businesses online. Our websites are our online home bases…the internet equivalent to a brick and mortar store. We need to pour our time, money, and energy into making our websites the best they can be before we fret about the latest and greatest developments from social media and apps and tools. We need to make sure our websites are well designed, full of good copy (that helps and educates our potential customers, and not written simply to dazzle them but hold little substance), easy to use, optimized for search traffic, and have other boring-but-necessary features in place like being mobile-friendly, GDPR-compliant, and with SSL certificates installed.

Then when we’re ready to take that next step with our online marketing, we need to do so in conjunction with all of our other (offline) marketing and advertising work. The online marketing space has grown in so many directions and has become so fragmented, and trying to keep up with all of it keeps moving us further and further away from a cohesive, focused, and integrated marketing plan.

So, at our next marketing meetings, we need to work on pulling together what we’re doing in our brick and mortar businesses, with our upcoming promotions or events, any mailers or coupons, radio, TV or billboards that have been set, what topics we’re planning to write about on our blogs, what products or services we’re featuring on our websites, what we’re planning to email out to everyone on our lists, plus what content we’re intending for our posts, tweets, pins, photos and videos, so that everything works together.

All business owners ultimately want a unified, cohesive presence. One that – no matter where or how a customer hears about us – they are getting the same message from our company. So worry less about the “next big thing” and all the “must dos”, and take a step back to review all the things you are trying to do with your business and your marketing, and get a clear sense of what and how you need to pull all your marketing efforts together.