It's obvious from my blog (and website) that I haven't blogged for almost three months, so what happened? Like any one man band I'm responsible for almost all functions in the company; sales, marketing, technical and management services, customer service and technical support. Also like many small businesses I've found the last six months to be tough financially, so I've been concentrating on cutting costs and finding new sources of income, and I stopped writing about what I do.
Why?
I think it's because the motivation for my blogging was all wrong, I was doing it because I felt I had to, not because I wanted to. Recently I've 'rediscovered' social networking through twitter, and having cut back my commitments in other areas (for example my Cambridge Network series of articles) I'm now re-motivated and raring to go again.
This has taught me a valuable level about the sustainability of social networking in business generally, and that lesson is that it has to be natural; there has to be a belief in social networking and to some extent a willingness to use it for what it was intended, rather than try and turn it into a 'just another advertising platform'.
If you see social networking in your business as another 'one way' marketing message like TV or print advertising then it will fail, you'll get little or no feedback, and it will prove unsustainable in the long term because it's difficult to keep up an artificial stream of content with no natural inspiration.
So keep it natural, keep it (apologies for the trite phrase) 'real', and remember that social networking is a two way communication channel between equal parties, not a one way message from above to those below. More coming from me soon (I'm now buzzing with content again!)
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