Shiny is nice.  Shiny is alluring.  In business, shiny can be devastating if there isn’t a purpose behind it.

Insecurity runs rampant in business today.  The conclusion as to why the competition is winning out is because they have an active Facebook fan page and you don’t.  Or their website is more “optimized” than yours so we all need to react and get what they have!  Wrong.

Yes, in order to survive as a business today you must stay current, but only as much as to stay where your buyers are.  Dumping money and time into a youtube channel because you saw some presentation as to how it’s the “thing everyone will be doing in a year so beat the curve” but unfortunately your base could care less to watch video after video.  

The point is, don’t just pursue the shiny.  If you hear a good idea or see a great thing someone is doing first ask yourself: Does this work to help our overall mission and grow our sales base or not?  If you can answer that question, the decision is easy and should be followed.

A few years ago you were crazy to think that you could succeed in business without a myspace presence.  People made a LOT of money holding those conferences and speaking at those events to convince you.  Enough said.

Maybe the answer is to grow where you are already?

When is the last time you’ve really put effort into driving people to your website?  And when they get there, what is there for them?  What value are you bringing to that tool that is already in place?  One area you will never lose in is setting your website up to be found online.  Nothing shiny about that!  Focus on that, grow that effort and let the shiny distractions fall to the side as more customers are finding you and buying what you have to offer.

Photo by Sim Dawdler

Author

With over a decade of experience, I have managed online marketing for a wide range of industries including biotech, high-tech, financial, higher education, non-profit, manufacturing, hardware providers, and startups. My specialty is helping business make the right turn with their online efforts focusing on lead generation and analytics.

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