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Gevril and Haurex Italia dinner during Baselworld in March 2011 with Larry Brauner standing in the background.
Baselworld 2012 is right around the corner!
Oct
12
Social Marketing Momentum
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Outside the Box, Web Marketing
In Social Marketing Leverage, I stated that the Internet gives us the ability to transfer information with relative ease and enables a great variety of online tools to provide us with a virtual type of leverage.In this article, I discuss another physical phenomenon, that of momentum, as it applies to the non-physical social marketing process.
Momentum is the impetus of an object or a process, its tendency to remain in motion. If you’ve ever skated or cross-country skied, you’ve enjoyed momentum or gliding. 
When riding in a car or bus that stopped short, you were thwarted by momentum as the vehicle stopped, but you kept going.
Most of the time, we don’t want to lose momentum. We’ve worked up some speed, or we’re highly productive — and we want it to continue.
Losing Physical Momentum
In the physical world, these factors can cause us to lose our momentum:
- Collision - Its outcome is generally hard to predict and is often catastrophic.
- Friction - Air, water and even our own brakes slow us down or stop us completely.
- Turning - To avoid collision, negotiate speed bumps or alter our final destination, we must brake partially or completely to change our direction.
Losing Social Media Momentum
In our non-physical social marketing work, the same factors contribute to our loss of momentum and productivity:
- Collision - Hitting the proverbial brick wall. A major plan is flawed, we accidentally delete all of our Twitter followers, or our Facebook account is phished. My advice in Social Marketing Leverage to “develop good contingency plans for when Murphy’s Law does strike” applies here and to all aspects of our lives.
- Friction - Indecision, multitasking, working at home while the kids are seeking attention, working at the office while a co-worker in the next cubicle is blabbing, slow social networking sites, associates who don’t keep their word, etc. These all tend to slow us down.
- Turning - This is huge. Abandoning a blog, changing our branding strategy midstream and other false starts lead to directional changes that slow us down and cost both time and money.
Social Marketing Prescription
What is my prescription for preserving social marketing momentum?
Planning, focus and consistency.
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Tags: consistency, focus, Internet, Internet marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, social marketing, Web Marketing
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Thanks for the insightful post Larry! The “Friction” part especially hit a nerve with me, with kids at home and all. It is definitely important to PLAN!
What bothers me Kenya is the great number of abandoned blogging and social networking projects — lots of starts and stops that add up to lots of wasted time and resources.
People have hopes and desires, but they’re not matched by the planning and commitment that are necessary to produce results.
Hi Larry,
Even with great planning, things still keep us from utilizing the momentum we built up. That’s just life and it’s good when we can still keep going in spite of set backs. Thanks, Larry, for another great post.
Deb
You are correct Larry with respect to the proverbial brick wall.
We spent a great deal of time building our blogs and websites, and getting them going and bam the brick wall effect. We get it up and running; now how do we keep constant traffic coming in? Where we goofed was trying to sell our products first instead of selling ourselves. If you have a following of friends and visitors, just give good information or provide needed products, and the wall will come down soon.
Bruce
I’ll be surprised Bruce if you ever hit that brick wall again, but be on the lookout for others.
Larry, one of the best articles I read on this blog was the analogy to the training for a marathon. You need to have an expert coach who has been there; you need to have the mindset and the commitment; you need to have a prize in mind (the why); and you need to be persistent and focused every day.
Besides our common interest in social media Steve, we share an interest in critical success factors.
Mindset and proficient use of tools are critical factors driving social media and web marketing success.
Hi Larry,
Some nice observations about momentum - the biggest internet “problem” that I have at the moment is that when I’m working from home friends think it’s ok to phone & say “let’s go swimming, let’s go to the cinema/pub/game/shops etc etc etc”. Then I usually say “no !” and they usually say “you know you want to !” - and, often , they are right. It would be much easier to have internet momentum without friends - but much less fun. O well ! ( but if momentum slows down too much then I sometimes hide behind the answering machine to make things happen out there!)
Cheers
Will
Hi Larry,
I like your physical analogy of momentum and how it can be lost leading to social marketing momentum loss causes.
Multitasking is one of my problems.
As for the prescription you give for preserving social marketing momentum the medicine I need to take is mostly planning. But to it are tied focus and consistency.
I wonder if you could post about the three, especially planning as it applies to social media.
I mean there are so many tools that deciding on which ones to use in order of priority is not that easy. I wonder which ones you’d recommend to focus on the most.
Vance
Very good post. This article also can be apply in every aspect of life. Thanks for sharing this insightful information.
You are very right Rudy. I just chose examples that were relevant to social marketing.
Vance,
It isn’t possible for me to prioritize for you, since we each have different situations and objectives.
I do however want to call your attention to an article I wrote back in February, The 80/20 Rule and Social Media, which I believe you’ll find quite pertinent.
In addition, their are many other archived articles in my site map which you might enjoy.
Larry, thank you for the insightful post. I will consider what you have pointed out for my future endeavors.
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