Week #14 Planning Future Strategy

The reason I took this class was because I was starting my own business out of necessity.  In June, after working for my former company for 15 years, I was asked to take an early retirement.  I wasn’t ready to retire, but I didn't have a choice in the matter.  I still have 10 years of work in me at the very least, thus, the reinvention of myself as a business owner doing what I have been doing for the past 33 years, I.T. work.  So, I had a dilemma, I needed to market myself and with little funds to do it.  I needed to learn social marketing skills, something that I had shunned in the past.  Yes, I had a Facebook page, but I was more of a lurker than a poster.  I didn't feel I had anything of value to add to the party, so I didn't.  This class has taught me that I have a lot to add to the party, and maybe somebody will listen and get something useful from what I have to say.

So now I have a Facebook Business Page to promote me and my business.  I've also joined Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and I’m rebuilding my website which will incorporate links to all of these.  I’m slowing overcoming my fear of posting, and I've started a blog.  I’m certainly not where I want to be yet, but I think I at least know the direction I’m heading.  I owe a lot of that to this class, it’s forced me to actually do it rather than just talk about doing it.

My Facebook business page is really the starting point and the most daily used.  I haven’t really got the hang of twitter yet, but I will be experimenting with it in the future.  I’m still in the process of working with LinkedIn, and I feel that this is also an ongoing project to be tweaked on a weekly basis.  I’m enjoying using all of these networks, but I still feel like I don’t really know what I’m doing yet.  I think it’s just a matter of doing it on a consistent basis and I will become more comfortable with all of them.  I will be devoting at least an hour a day to social networking, and maybe more in the future as needed.  I still feel that uneasiness that I should be out doing something, rather than just playing on the computer.  However, I do know that if you don’t put any work into social media networking, you’re not going to get anything out of it.

So, in conclusion, I will be tweaking my website weekly, and writing a weekly blog.  Working on Facebook daily, and LinkedIn and Twitter weekly.  That’s about all I can handle at this point.