Stan Smith

I Am Not The Tennis Player...

...and Adidas hasn't named a shoe line after me. While we are at it, I am not the animated comedy character or a Central Intelligence Agency agent either. Look, I understand branding ourselves and I have had experts tell me that I can dominate the front page of the search engine results if I put enough effort into it, but I don't think most people have quite as much competition as I do. I could topple the Statue of Liberty off her base if I put enough effort into that too, couldn't I?

For the past couple years my business partner has been after me to brand myself and I have argued that it wouldn't make much sense for me to even try to compete. Seriously, there are already 3,710,000 results without me. That is a whole bunch of websites to compete with, isn't it?

Since that didn't work, she tried an entirely different tactic and said I should put more of myself into my blogging which told me she hadn't read my blog in quite awhile. I'm not particularly surprised because she refers to social media marketing as 'yucky stuff.'

This blog is a capitulation on my part (capitulation refers to surrendering or giving up). It isn't in my nature to surrender, but I have always felt there was a missing piece between my social networking and my business. That missing piece should have been filled by my blog, but my blogs are about social networking for business and not about me.

To be completely honest I am uncomfortable writing about myself, but I can give you some insight of how I see social media marketing. I believe that social networking should be first and foremost SOCIAL. I realize that sounds awfully simple, but I see people screw that up almost daily on both Facebook and Twitter. Seriously, how many times have you accepted a friend request and the first thing you get is a link to a business opportunity that will make both you and your new friend richer than King Solomon? Do people act like that in real life? If they do, that could explain why they're not invited to a lot of parties.

For me it is this simple, I have a business and if someone is interested in it they will eventually ask me about it. I don't think pressuring people into joining my business opportunity helps either of us so I stay clear of that as much as possible. You may notice that I stream a lot of content from my blogs through my social media sites. I don't write everything that is posted on my blogs. This is especially true of The Perfect Storm Team where I post a lot of links to articles I have read that I think are thought provoking.

I write The Perfect Storm Team blog to help the team members stay up to date with social networking for business, social media marketing and social networking news. Because there is a huge gap in the level of experience within the team I write a second blog that can be found below. I started writing this after being told that the content on The Perfect Storm Team was too advanced for some team members.

Regardless of your social media marketing experience I hope you find something helpful and if there is ever anything you don't understand or need clarified, please know I am here to help.

* Note: The picture is of the tennis player and the shoes Adidas named for him.