I’ve been thinking about this one for a while now, but I thought I’d get some feedback because y’all have a knack for turning my thinking upside-down!
It seems like everyday a new social media tool or gadget emerges. And with many, many tools out there for the same purpose, it’s no wonder that clients are often hesitant to jump into the social media game. As someone who works in a Digital department, I feel pressure myself to be involved with every new gizmo that hits the Web.
So how many tools do I need to master? At what point does it stop being helpful to my clients and become too overwhelming to matter?
If I were to try to master all the new tools that come out, at some point it would start to take up too much of my time, and my other work would begin to suffer. And I suspect that at some point the time spent to master each and every new social media tool would no longer be valuable to my clients.
Where is that line? How should I decide which tools are worth my time? My early thoughts on this were to stick with the tools that could most benefit my clients, but sometimes it’s hard to tell which tools would be truly applicable until you’ve tried them yourself.
Another piece of this conundrum that bothers me is the idea that mastering all of these tools would mean creating accounts for each. Inevitably I would not end up using all of these accounts on a regular basis because who can really keep up with it all? Is it worse to never try new social media tools or to have a bunch on inactive accounts to your name?
I feel as though it’s a common belief that if we are to guide clients and help them use social media, that we should also be using it ourselves. With that argument in mind, it’s hard to know whether to jump in and leave an account inactive after learning all the tricks or to not try at all. I think this is really where I’m having the most trouble.
What do you think? In your experience, does one matter more to clients or what have you done in your own work?
