I have this new habit. When I’m alone on a long car trip I will put out a tweet asking people to call me and keep me company. It has led to some serendipitous benefits, including meeting Bill Piper.
Bill called me seeking advice — lots of advice! He had begun a new marketing assignment and admitted that he was over his head. I’ve followed his rapid progress and he has graciously offered this guest post on his learning adventures in social media. By the way, he came up with the headline too! Here’s Bill:
Several months ago, I was handed the reins to my company’s digital brand.
I didn’t know what I was doing. At all.
I’m a young marketer and enjoy social media for myself, but the most I knew about digital B2B marketing was that I could really blow it. I work for a cutting-edge IT company, so our ambition was to do social media in the same manner: on the cutting-edge, and with excellence.
Starting from square one, I knew that I needed a solid plan with executable tasks and guidance from someone who had been where I wanted to go. So I took Mark’s social media marketing class and learned a sustainable process to drive our desired business benefits (revenue) over the long haul.
We started implementing our strategy earlier this year with blogging, SEO, and a few social media outlets. We haven’t done it perfectly. It hasn’t been impressive. But the thing is – it has WORKED!
We’ve secured sales leads, generated revenue, and solidified our brand recognition through social media.
I’m not an expert but I’ve outlined a set of principles that have worked, even when I had to work above my experience level.
1. Make humility work for you.
For most of us, an honest and objective look at ourselves should enable an attitude of humility. The difficult part is that it’s not always easy. To be successful, figure out the people smarter and better at their jobs than you are and ask them lots of questions. Who is the Mark Schaefer in your community? There are lots of gurus out there but who can you work with who really knows what he or she is doing? We all want to look smart, but asking for help and assuming a humble attitude of learning can be your biggest asset in developing your skill sets.
2. Focus. Develop your skills one by one.
Given the breadth of digital strategies, there’s a lot of knowledge and savvy that goes into successful marketing. What are the top three marketing skill sets you need to develop? Pick one at a time, get really good at it and move on to the next. Starting out, I learned proficiency in SEO first, then blogging, and then Twitter, etc. and, I’m going to keep learning, too.
3. Be committed and decisive.
With inexperience and uncertainty it’s easy to over-think things. When faced with uncertainty, I found it important to make the best decision I could at that specific time. I acknowledged that I didn’t know all the variables at play but would move forward expecting to make adjustments. I couldn’t commit to being perfect, but I could commit to constant forward motion.
Which expert are you more like in your career right now: the expert champ or the expert chump? If you’re a chump, it’s okay. You don’t have to be perfect in your social media execution. We’re all still learning, and there are probably things I should be doing that I haven’t even heard about yet. At the end of the day, though, I’m content with my ignorance-expert status as long as we keep getting results.
What has your journey been like? How are you learning and growing in your job?
Bill Piper works in business development and marketing for Claris Networks, an information technology firm in Knoxville, TN. You can follow him on Twitter at @billpiper.
