Many people who get into internet marketing are so excited about their new ventures that they over-indulge – usually with disastrous consequences. What usually happens is one of the following:
1. They try to do everything at once:
It’s sooo easy to fall into this trap…
Everything looks great, and everything seems like fun, and everything you see has potential – so you want to do it all. You want to have a blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Pinterest account, a Linkedin account, a Google Plus account and page, A Youtube channel, A tumblr account, Snapchat, Soundcloud…
And you work at building a decent following on all of these, while trying to promote your blog, build your mailing list, evading family and friends, saving your relationship and preserving your sanity…
You get the idea.
It’s all too much. Period.
Think logically: If you have a number of substantial tasks to complete (at home, work, etc), and you try to do all of them at once, what’s going to happen? Well, the outcome may include any of the following:
a. Nothing will get done. Your mind will be so scattered trying to keep a handle on everything that you won’t make any real progress on any of the tasks.
b. It will get done, but due to the fact that you are doing so many things simultaneously, the progress at each of these will be frustratingly slow.
c. You will eventually get it all done, but the quality of the execution may be less than perfect – because you would have rushed some things, and overlooked others.
Now, when you are working on the internet, there is another ingredient to add to the mix: People. You see, when you are working on building a following on a social network, it also requires that you “be there”, and appear to be real and human (automation is all to easy, and can cost you a lot of followers/friends/connections). This means that you have to be active regularly on any social network you take on. You also have to be able to respond to personal (direct/inbox) messages relating to what you are trying to promote (your content, your product, etc.).
If you don’t appear to be a regular active user of the platform, you are likely to find that people will simply start ignoring you – and that will be devastating to your efforts to generate traffic.
As such, pick a few things you want to focus on, and work on those. You will get much more traffic from mastering one social platform and working it for maximum results, than you will get from having a multitude of small social accounts that are growing too slowly to have any real impact on their own.
2. Trying to learn everything at once:
Some people, especially those who failed before at making money online, decide to “learn everything” before they start again…
Unfortunately, there are two little problems associated with doing that:
a. Firstly, it’ll take you ages to be able to learn everything there is to learn. There is a boatload of information out there, and a boatload of topics and subjects to learn about. There are a MULTITUDE of different internet business models, an insane number of different traffic generation techniques, copywriting, content strategies, marketing psychology, web design, web development, graphic design…
Think about it like this: Does a Formula 1 race driver only start driving once he reaches F1 competence level? No. He starts driving when he’s is old enough to get a driving license. The rest comes with time. Learn the basics, and then learn the rest on the go.
b. The internet is an ever-evolving ecosystem (if I could call it that). If you take (only) a year to master everything, much of your information will already be outdated by the time you finish, and you’ll have to start all over again.
Besides the fact that things change, and websites (read: social networks) change, acceptable use policies change, and the fact that some methods simply end up being over-used and become ineffective, there is also the little matter of new websites starting up and upsetting the way people do things.
For instance – before Facebook came along, MySpace was “the big thing”. Look what happened. For a while now, more and more young people have been leaving Facebook (mostly because of their parents’ presence…:), and moving on to newer platforms like Snapchat.
And just on Facebook alone, see how much things have changed over the past five years. If you haven’t been using it that long, just go digging into the older Youtube videos about marketing on Facebook (or any platform you want to use), and see how much has changed in that period. Heck, just have a look at videos from one year ago, and the latest videos. You’ll get the point.
The bottom line: Things are always changing. Some things you just have to learn on the fly, and adapt to it. It’s not like getting a degree in engineering, where the laws of physics and mathematics will always apply forever, regardless of how the industry advances….
The internet is fluid. And it’s evolving at speed.
Sorry, but it’s not waiting for you – or anyone else, for that matter.
In conclusion:
Once again, it comes back to learning the basics (just enough to get you started making money online), planning, and staying focused. The rest will come over time.
It’s both as simple – and as difficult – as that.