I can be awful dumb at times – like most I guess, too busy to stop and think things through properly. Then some flash of inspiration hits me between the eyes and I have to back track to get myself sorted.
Over the weekend it struck me my social media activities were starting to get in the way. Like some kind of flood my time was leaking out of control. I needed a new way to organize and be more productive. That’s when I kicked myself firmly in the rear.
USE FRONT OFFICE BOX YOU IDIOT!
Here’s the detail.
Our early experience with Adwords was a lot less than disappointing. We didn’t mind spending the money, but it wasn’t getting us anywhere, and that hurt.
So the next strategy was Social Media – get involved, meet people, share what we know. For nearly six months we’ve done little else, met a lot of nice people, helped a few and been helped along the way.
But at the weekend it became obvious we were running out of control. Whatever value we created would get lost, because there was no record of who we’d touched, what their interests and skills were, what synergies there might be between us.
We’d also lost control of our “content”. I write extensively on a number of topics:
* Sales secrets picked up over 30 years of doing the job
* Software on the web we find and use to run our business, for free
* Discoveries we come across in exploring social media
The people who share their knowledge explain how to maximize the value of content, posting it on multiple sites, which is a lot of fun but soon gets to be confusing. We’re involved in a bunch of places, posting content on all of them. Here’s a list:
* Front Office Box
* Front Office Box User Group Forum
* Smallbusinesssense
* Google Knols
* Adds You
* Ezine Articles
* Widespread Relationship Asset Management
* Start Up Biz
* Start Up Nation
* Business11Business
* Business Warfare
* Salesgravy
Right now we have 66 pieces of “content” published on these sites, but they aren’t all published everywhere. We’re in a “pickle” not knowing which article is published where, and therefore which we can re-use, and where. This problem is only getting worse, there’s something new coming out most days.
BUT, the problem is worse than that. In addition to the 5 forum mentioned above we’re also active on Linked In, Facebook, Twitter, Utterli, CEOforum – each of which introduces us to people. Across all of these we’ve met hundreds of like minded people who’re keen to work with us in some way.
Some of them have registered to use our software 
We manage our user records in a different system, so we’re on top of that of course, but don’t keep records in our networking activities of those. Twitter and Linked In don’t let me keep records of which contacts have Front Office Box accounts.
How embarrassing would it be if on Twitter I suggested somebody might look at our stuff when they’re already users? Doesn’t bear thinking about.
So without thinking about it we’ve created a monster.
66 articles (and growing) for 12 sites (we’re trying to not grow this but won’t succeed).
100′s of contacts – some users, some asked for white papers, some answered questions, some rated our answers as “best answer”.
Makes my brain hurt just thinking about it. We need a thought through process if we’re to avoid the law of diminishing returns before we’ve gotten anywhere!
They say inspiration is born of neccessity. Mine is born in guilt. We built Front Office Box so that intelligent people could use it, imaginatively, to get on top of all the things they do, whatever they were.
And here’s me, designed and paid for the software, not using it for a problem it was designed to solve. Hence the self arse kicking.
To be fair it took me some time to think through (and it’s my baby so it would take others longer) but now we’re on top of everything. The process has shown me one development on the back burner is much more important than we’d thought – which is good, of course – we’ll do it ASAP.
This post has gone on too long already.
Anybody wanting to know how to use Front Office Box to manage their social media engagement – please contact me @frontofficebox or steve@frontofficebox.us
Otherwise, I’ll be posting again soon on just how I’m using it to solve a problem that we didn’t know we’d ever have.
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