Social Media: Taking the Bull by the Horns
It’s memory lane time again for me. It seems like it was only a few years ago when I was the manager of one of the largest 4-H Horse Clubs in East Texas. What popped this memory into my head was a remark a client made during our meeting this morning…
Guess I am going to have to take the ‘Bull by the Horns’ and let you do the social media for me since none of this Social Networking crap is working.
I actually was given an opportunity to take a bull by the horns back in days when I was the manage of my daughter’s 4-H Horse Club. The "bull by the horns" opportunity came when I was in a 4-H leader camp class where the leaders of 4-H clubs that offered Roping for their kids had to learn how to Bull Dog a Calf down to the ground by taking the bull by the horns and twisting his head until he drove himself into the ground falling on his side which stopped him form hurting someone. It was part of a safety program taught by the Texas A&M 4-H leaders in case a adult had to secure a loose calf when one of the kids was on the arena ground during a 4-H roping event.
I know, it’s a long story of how I got to a go to a bull dogging class, however, that opportunity to taking a calf to the ground so a kid does not get hurt offered me the opportunity to learn how hard taking a Bull by the Horns really is to do. Believe me, I am not a little guy and it took all I had to pass that course..
The Bull by the Horns saying comes from an old cowboy saying meaning doing a tough job yourself. In business, there phrase, take the bull by the horn means that a business person is going to have to take control and do a tough job themselves.
So, I took it literally that what my client was saying about taking control of his on business’s promotions on the Internet was something he was finding hard to do but was something he had to do to keep his business going. Too many times, Internet marketers will take a blank approach to advising businesses how to market their services or products on the Internet. The adage of setting up a profile on a half dozen social networking sites and then spending hours in forums with uninterested people just is not producing anything for most business people. The badgering people online with relentless emailing to do side-door hyping of what their business does is starting to produce a bad image of their business by many of the members of these social networking groups.
I had been hearing for sometime now that online Social Networking was dyeing and have seen first hand from years of being very active in most online social networks that the business environment in most online social networking groups is questionable at best. Most people who join these groups do so to create a casual relationship with their friends and they have little interest in associating with anyone they do not know personally. It is this basic interest and reaction to strangers by these members that is causing business people to pull out of these sites taking their advertising dollars for those sites with them.
What is taking place today, right now, is a new form of social media is being developed. Businesses are moving quickly to hiring people to come in house to do their social media on the Internet. Naturally, they are going in and setting up their clients on a solid business environment sites like LinkedIn and, very reluctantly, placing a cursory profile on Facebook. They then use these sites to gather a community of likeminded people together and then invite them to physical offline conferences or gatherings. This is the New Social Media strategies which more than likely will lead to a major change in the Internet environment.
This changes the way businesses are promoting themselves online and is bring on more gatherings and conferences. It is at these gathering where business people and consumers will attend to learn something beneficial for them personally or professionally. It is at these conferences they can see eye to eye that @mrbusinessgolf and @oddblast are real live people who like to socialize like anyone else, but also want to produce value towards what they do for business.
It is good to see small to medium size businesses looking for help and hiring people to help them get noticed on the Internet. This will help the economy. Now if some of those people they are hiring to get the word out about them would show everyone that they are a REAL person by interacting with the community they are attempting to build the the Internet will eventually become more of a trusted place to build those communities everyone is interested being part of.
I think you are going to see more and more larger businesses taking the Bull by the Horns and dropping those ‘no direction’ Internet marketing firms and taking control of their business’ marketing with more prudent social media methods. That would really improve the mental health of many people who hate the Internet due to all of the noise they have to read through to get to know the Real People online.
Now, I think I will go out and practice that Bull Dogging move I learn at Texas A&M..it looks like this new client is requiring me to show him my moves…
Let me know how I can help.
