When I work with my clients, we start by looking at all the options available today.  Apart from my regular clients, I also consult short-term (about 2 or 3 sessions of a one to two hour duration each) with professionals looking for strategic marketing mentoring.

I can understand that – for those of you whose area of familiarity is not the Marketing environment – it can be quite overwhelming to be presented by all these choices that you are being told you simply must have to market your business effectively.  There’s a website, blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, Google+ (the new one on the block), PR, article syndication, SEO, OSN and so on… Plus, different tools work brilliantly for different people and they simply swear by them.  I admit to being an absolute blog junkie, I am a Twitter fan insofar as Twitter is a great source of information for me, and LinkedIn is my favoured professional networking platform.  But that’s just because of the nature of my business, and because of my personal preferences.

So, it comes down to working with my clients to identify what tools, options or media they would feel most comfortable working with.  It has to resonate with you – after all, you are the one who is going to have to maintain it and keep up the momentum.

If you don’t write well, or don’t like writing, think twice before starting a blog.  It’s a real commitment to keep up with regular posts.  (Mea culpa, but I think my last post was at the end of August! What do they say about the cobbler’s children being worst shod?)

If you don’t like interacting with people and networking or socialising – whether in person or online, then think very carefully about what online social networking (OSN) sites you sign up for and how many of them you can effectively maintain.  You must also thing very carefully about who you network with on which sites.  For example, most people I know keep LinkedIn for their professional contacts and Facebook strictly for their personal contacts and NEVER mix the two.

So don’t dive in the deep end.  Think carefully and take your time constraints, your natural likes and dislikes and your commitments into account before taking on more than you can effectively keep up.  Rather do a few things really well and have a big impact, than try and do many things poorly.

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