Why You Should Not Be Doing Social Media

(Text-based blog posts are going to be more and more rare on AllAboutFocus.com and JustAskPatrick.com. So this is a treat. I don’t have time for text, and I express myself much better when I open my mouth and speak the words I mean. You can see my point in my tone, my volume and my body language. So you will me expanding my video page/YouTube channel more in the future. )

Anyways.

Here is a quick post with two simple questions you can use to measure your internet marketing efforts. They will not take long to answer. If you ever hire me to be your personal social media expert or you ever join one of my paid, industry-exclusive mastermind groups (let me know if you are interested) these two questions will be the yardstick that I use to measure how well you are doing.

1. Do you have a website, and 2. do you have an email list?

If you answer NO to either one of those questions then don’t even ask me about what you should be doing in social media. Don’t come talking to me about mobile marketing. And don’t start a discussion with me as to whether or not you should be blogging. If you don’t have both of those items answered with a YES the online marketing conversation stops before it even gets started. Those are the  the basics of any online or brick-and-mortar business. And you cannot give me any good reason why you don’t have both.

Fix it right now. Fix it with the links below. Fix it before you read another blog. Fix it before drinking any more coffee.

Get a website right now.

Get a website domain and hosting account. It will cost you less than $10 / month. Use BlueHost. Why? Because I said so. Web hosting is a commodity. There are 10000 places you can host a website. If you don’t know anything about hosting then take my advice – because I know plenty about hosting. I’ve hosted tons of places, and I’ve run my own hosting company. BlueHost works as good as any, and they have a very common control panel that you will see at many other hosting companies. And I don’t care what your friends tell you – don’t host at GoDaddy. They are slow and there are other reasons that they are terrible.

After you get your account use your new control panel to install WordPress. Why? Because I said so. If you don’t know the difference between all of the content management systems, use the one that I say is the easiest. WordPress is very common and you will have no trouble finding help on how to use it. If you get a BlueHost account with my links in this post I’ll even install WordPress for you for free. I am just that nice. Please just get the domain, hosting account and WordPress started today. Not tomorrow. Today.

Get an email list right now.

Visit Mailchimp right now. Sign up and use their free mailing list plan. You can stay at Mailchimp and email your customers as long as you want for free as long as your list stays below 2000 people. If you do what I say and click on the word Mailchimp someplace in this post you will have your own email list started before the sun goes down today.

That is all I have today. Please take these two steps above. They are the two important first steps you can take to stop all over your competition.

These great resources and more can be found on my brand new Patrick Recommends page at JustAskPatrick.com 

Related posts:

1. Social Media TV Monday – September 2011
2. Video: Finding your Social Media Mojo
3. Who died and made Social Media boss?
4. The TRUTH about the Social Media Fad
5. Oklahoma City Social Media Training Schedule