When you’re a musician, you play the same song over and over again. Eventually you want to do something different with it, so you change keys, orchestrations, whatever, to freshen it up again.

When you’re a comedian, you do the same routine over and over again. You don’t really get to change much, because then you start messing with a proven laugh line, and maybe you don’t get the same result.

When you do an interactive speaking gig, and you do it multiple times, you don’t have to do any mixing up. The audience does it for you, every time.

That’s my main personal takeaway from last night’s Top 10 Social Media Opportunities engagement for the NH High Tech Council. For the third time in a month, I’ve done this breezy overview with Kevin Skarritt of Acorn Creative, and each time, the results are different. (Except for the positive response - so far, that’s been thankfully consistent.)

This time it was in person at Fratello’s in Manchester (odd photo of the room - the windows make it look like we’re underwater). And though the questions and comments from the attendees covered quite a lot of ground, one common theme’s been tugging at my attention all day today.

What’s the point of “doing” social media? Is it useful, or just a big waste of time and killer of professional productivity?

There are so many ways to get social online - in the resource guide Acorn provided, there are more than 100 social bookmarking sites listed (and that’s just bookmarking, for Pete’s sake!) - that you’ve got overwhelm on the one hand as a barrier to entry, and the now-percolating concept of “social media burnout” as a cautionary flag on the other. And if you’re running in circles where the people you know don’t blog, tweet, or get found on Facebook, why bother?

We flagged Chris Brogan’s link-bait-worthy post “You Can Do Your Job Without Twitter” the other day, and it raised a related point - we’ve all been doing our jobs and running our businesses without social media for years, so is social media just another distraction?

Here’s my response: What does your target market say about social media?

And: What will they be saying 1, 3, 5 years from now?

If your current clients and prospects are using social media, I’d say yes, it’s high time you investigated a social media strategy.

If not, don’t think that lets you off the hook.

At a conference in March, I quoted John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, from a presentation of his I’d watched online. In it, he cited a survey where 76% of respondents said they were using the Internet to search for local products and services. I asked my audience whether they thought the percentage would be higher or lower across New Hampshire. The consensus? It’s lower now, but it’s only going to get higher.

So test out a social media tactic and see how well it works for you. Greg Stuart (though he’s probably not the first or last to recommend this - just the one I heard it from) advises you use 10% of your advertising/marketing budget on new things you haven’t tried before (70% to what works already, 20% to tweaking things that aren’t working as well as you’d like).

And if you happen to make Facebook or Twitter your tested tactic of choice, click either of those links to find and connect with me there!

Posted in Lessons Learned |

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