INTERESTED IN SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING? LEARN TO FLY A HELICOPTER FIRST

This past Christmas, my husband Peter wished for one thing and one thing only – an RC Helicopter. He lived and breathed RC helis - he watched hours of YouTube videos, read how-to guides and reviews, he even figured out a strategy to learn how to fly one. And so Santa, i. e. myself, had no other choice but to give Peter a 2.4Ghz Walkera HM 60B Brushless ready to fly RC Helicopter.

But while the heli was ready to fly, Peter wasn’t. As it turned out, it’s not as easy to fly an RC helicopter as it might seem. It took Peter about a month - and few hundred bucks for replacement parts - to get the thing off the ground. Today, he can keep the helicopter in the air for a minute or so. You get the idea.

Here’s what my beloved husband, has to say about why it is so difficult to fly an RC heli: “Well, one would think that you have only a limited number of controls to handle when flying a heli. In reality, you do… Seven of them, which need to be manipulated at the same time in order to fly successfully.” In addition, “all parts need to be put on correctly so they don't fly off or cause unwanted vibrations. And all the parts need to be configured as a whole in order for the heli to be balanced properly.”

Why am I telling you this? Because, the same is true for your social media marketing efforts.

There’s a lot at play here. Blogging, commenting, social networking, online video, social bookmarking, microblogging, search engine optimization - all the components of your social media marketing mix need to be tuned individually AND working in harmony, for your ‘helicopter’ to fly. And don’t forget all the ‘controls’ of your social media marketing like benchmarking, monitoring, participating, developing content and much-much more, which need to be handled simultaneously.

So, don’t get discouraged if your social media strategy doesn’t take off the ground right away. Practice makes perfect. It’s just the matter of time for your efforts to pay off!