Here are two diametrically opposed viewpoints that need to be balanced.

Market or die!  If you don’t take the time to market now, you will have plenty of time later. 

and

DVRs were invented so that we could ignore marketers and commercials. 

Do It!

Mobile-phone-advertising (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m sitting here watching a little TV and it seems that the networks use a lot of valuable advertising time… time that could generate revenue… to promote new shows.  Do the shows pay for the time?  No.  But, if the show is popular, there will be viewers.  If there are viewers, the networks get to sell the advertising time for more money.  So, the networks take some of their most valuable inventory and dedicate it to marketing themselves.

Many small business owners, and it seems ESPECIALLY those in the real estate sphere, relegate marketing and advertising to the back burner.  There isn’t time to market when there is actual “revenue generating business” to take care of.  But, after ignoring the marketing and advertising aspects of their business, they found that the “revenue generating business” had slacked off.

I used to work for a photographer that reserved some of his most valuable time to talk with potential new clients… even if it meant turning down existing work.  Of course, we maintained a pretty tough schedule when things got busy, but the marketing was constant.  Even when we were shooting 14 hours days, from before sunrise until after sunset, we would come back to the studio and prep mailings and package stock photos for agencies.

There were a few other photographers I worked for.  They were happy when they were busy, and marketing like mad when they weren’t.  Business was up and down…

But Be Cool About It…

Football is ok, but I can go an entire season without watching a single game… and I’m cool with that.  But I record the Super Bowl.  I don’t really watch the game.  I watch the commercials.  But the rest of the year, I avoid commercials like the plague.  I have an Ad-Blocker on my internet browser so that I don’t see a lot of ads as I surf.  For the TV that we watch in the household, most of it cycles through the DVR so that we can skip the commercials.  When I am watching my FaceBook stream, I tend to ignore the people that just post up self-promotion.

So, how can marketing and advertising be effective if we all just ignore it?  And should we really contribute more to the noise?

It is a tough question and a difficult balance to maintain.  We HAVE to market, but if we do it too much, it has the opposite effect, we get tuned out by the very people we are trying to reach.

Mean it when you market.

Don’t overdo it.

Make it cool.

Keep it relevant.

Related articles

• Marketing Techniques for Small Businesses That Work (digitalbrandmarketing.com)
• Common Marketing Mistakes (logicpath.com)
• 6 Small Business Lessons from Instagram (talkingsmallbiz.com)
• Your Place in the Marketing Mix (outspokenmedia.com)
• The future of marketing and advertising (slideshare.net)

IPhone First Generation 8GB (3680455198) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I took a little time out and knocked out 3 blog posts for another of my blogs.  I did it while waiting for a client to arrive at a showing.  I used my tablet (a smart phone would also work).

Video.  Last week I popped up a video up on this blog that I shot in just a few minutes.  I think it took about 15 minutes to shoot it… twice.

The point is that I hear from a lot of agents that say they don’t have time to blog.  There is almost always time.  Of course the quality would be a bit better if it was done in a studio… but they would have a different feel.  A lot of viewers actually like the video to me more “raw and real”.

One of the nice things is that you can actually have an idea and shoot it right then… which can be even better than making notes about what to write about later.

Related articles

• Is Your Blog Brain-Storm More Like a Fog? (lanebailey.info)

Remember when FaceBook changed the format for personal profiles a few months ago?  A lot of people grumbled, and FaceBook did it anyway.  They gave us all plenty of warning, but a lot of us waited until the last minute…

They are at it again… and have been for a few weeks.  I’ve been ignoring it on my pages.  But the deadline is today (March 30th)… beginning on Saturday (March 31st) the pages are changing over to a similar Timeline to that of the profiles.

Luckily, all-around Good Guy, Hockey Fan and Biker, Mike Mueller put out a post just yesterday talking about the changes and how to get everything done on your FaceBook Page.  Go check it out.

For the record, I changed over my pages yesterday.  It also made me decide that they need more work…

Infographic courtesy of Maxymiser

We have those times… it seems like even though we know there are a thousand things we can write about, NOTHING comes to mind.  We stare at the computer like the whole concept of writing something is completely foreign.  I know that I have been there.

Brain (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But there are a few things you can do to get you through…

• Keep a “Post Idea Notebook” at hand.  Write down those cool ideas as you get them.  They will be gone in a few minutes…
• Along the same lines, leave yourself a voice mail with your idea.  This is a MUCH better solution while driving, and I get a lot of ideas while driving.
• Subscribe to a variety of RSS feeds, both inside your industry and in general news.  Often, the items in the news will be of interest to your readers, but they might want it brought to their level, or translated to how it affects them.

We’ve all seen the list above.  I think that every post on blog ideas came from the same source.  But there are more things that you can do to fill that bank…

1. Brainstorm.  Sit down with a piece of paper, a tablet, your phone… whatever… and write as many ideas as you can.  Don’t worry about the quality… just write them down.
2. Build an “Idea Council”.  Put together, or join, a group of bloggers with different niches.  If you blog about real estate, find people that blog about ANYTHING else.  What they blog about is not important, and what you blog about shouldn’t be important to them.  In fact, it isn’t even important that they blog…  What is important is that they are creative and willing to speak up.  What you are going to do is listen to THEIR ideas about what they want to know about your blogging niche.

About an hour after this post goes live, I will be taking part in exactly that kind of group as part of Social Media Breakfast – Atlanta.  The topic for this month’s breakfast will be “Crowd-Sourcing Blog Topics” and we will be using a round-table format to help each person come up with topics for their own blogs.  We’ll see if we can kick out at least 5 actionable post ideas for each person…

BTW, Social Media Breakfast – Atlanta meets on the 3rd Thursday of the month in Cobb/Marietta and on the 4th Thursday in Gwinnett/Suwanee.  Check out our FaceBook page for details.

Related articles

• 5 Types of Multimedia Content You Should Be Adding to Your Blog (bloggingtips.com)