By Mars Dorian, {grow} Contributing Columnist
Picture this.
You are walking your online biz journey.
But in the middle of your trip, a mysterious fog approaches and clouds your path.
The fog is not some ugly gray smoke; no, it’s beautiful, shiny rainbow fog with twinkling little stars. Making your mouth drool, your eyes sparkle. Glitzy dee glitz. You stop on your true journey, and meander around, trying to grab the elusive little stars.
“But the fog’s so pretty,” your mind says, and it may be true. But no matter how candy-colored, how twinkly it gets, it’s still fog, and you become hopelessly lost.
That’s what today’s social media online web world became to me. It was a rainbow fog filled with cool apps, apparent “best business practices,” and platforms that led me away from my true path — focused activity that leads to real business results.
During my four year long digi-career, I have become distracted by a lot of shiny new things that did nothing but evaporate my time.
These are the four major fog shinies that have slowed down my online career … May you avoid them like the plague.
Focusing on hype platforms
What’s a hype platform? For me, it’s a platform that gets hyped as the next Facebook / Twitter killer because the online media needs a new headline.
For me, Klout became a hype platform.
It looked cool in the beginning, started with a controversial concept (Can you put a number on a somebody’s influence?) and surged in the first year. I spent significant time on this. I gave ratings to others, connected with Klout influences, and made sure I social media’d enough to get my ranking high. And guess what it did for my business? Zero.
Now whenever a person tells me I should IMMEDIATELY jump on this hot, new platform (like right now, in the middle of writing this article), I need to hold still and ponder.
Does this really improve my business? Or is that just another hype platform that others jump on to boast themselves with early adopter status?
Vanity metrics.
Traffic is cool. High traffic is even cooler. Like a hoverboard. Look, my fellow social media peeps, look how high I hover above the ground.
But it doesn’t really matter to my freelance business.
My traffic now is half of what it was last year, but I don’t care. I make way more money than last year because I attract more high value clients. The numbers are down, but the quality’s up.
But hey, traffic may be important to you if you’re aiming for sponsors and ads. Just make sure it’s a metric you need to gauge.
Vanity metrics only pay for your ego.
Obsessing with email subscriptions
“You need a biiig list.”
I have a couple of blogger friends who swear by the power of popup-boxes and “welcome subscription boxes” that obscure the whole screen. So I tried them out.
Subscriptions surged, and I was also hoping they would lead to more sales and client work.
But you know what took a dive? My open rates.
I realized that having high subscription rates is useless when most of them don’t open the actual emails. And that’s what happened. Lots and lots of interested signups who were cajoled by the popup box and my tricks, e.g. a free guide and a page-big webform.
No more.
I now focus on getting quality subscribers, instead of acquiring as many half-hearted ones as I can. You don’t need a big list, you need a good list.
The tools you ‘absolutely’ need
You have to use (this tool) to be successful. As in, this mega-tool to check your metrics. Or this super-important one that tracks your client record, or how about this one…
Hundreds of apps I desperately need to run my biz.
Right?
Wrong.
Truth is, you don’t need all those fancy schmancy tools. It’s again the fog glitzing you. People have had successful business for years without any of these apps, so what is the real cost-benefit of the time you spend examining these things?
Remember the essential basic line: I [what you do] for [who you serve] so that they can [master overcome defeat] their [struggling point] to gain [huge benefit]…
Then you have the most important strategy for growing your biz. And no app or software tool on the planet can replace that.
Conclusion
With a web world that clouds with you beautiful, shiny things floating in the rainbow fog, it’s easy to get distracted. Stay focused on your business journey. Ask yourself:
Do I really need this tool for my business or I am wasting my time?
Is this platform helping me bring in customers or is it vanity?
Do I focus on precisely the right metric?
So what is distracting you? Is the pressure of keeping up with the next big thing in social media helping you or hurting you? I’d like to hear from you in the comment section.
Original illustration by the author.