And there’s nothing worse than having to tell that client to holster it back up because they aren’t ready to pull the trigger.

That is sometimes the situation we find ourselves in when our small business clients are interested in implementing social media strategies before they have made sure that the location they are driving traffic to – usually their Web site – is prepared to handle the traffic.

When it comes to marketing their own brand, many small- and mid-sized businesses are working with limited resources.  So a decision to increase focus in one area often inadvertently becomes a decision to decrease attention in another.

Embarking on a social media strategy is a major undertaking for any company, an effort that often manages to soak up a lot of internal resources.  This can mean that the more mundane efforts it takes to update the company Web site can often go ignored, leaving the place you are trying to drive more traffic to looking something less than its best. Why is this a problem?  Because social media efforts are just a means to an end, with your final goal being to convert traffic into sales.

It’s important that the first step of your social media strategy be taking a look at your Web site and making sure it is an effective end-destination for every tweet, blog post and shared video.

• Are there clear “calls to action” throughout your Web site?
• Are your products and service pages current, accurate and complete?
• If you are targeting a specific audience with specific services/products needs in your social media efforts, are those services/products easily found?
• Are your contact pages updated and complete?  Is it easy for customers to continue the dialog that you started with a social media vehicle?
• Is your Web site content of interest to your social media audiences?

Pages that need simple corrections should be taken care of right away.  Any section that needs more extensive effort should be avoided as landing pages for social media traffic.  Once you are comfortable that your Web site is ready and able to do handle the new traffic, your company can feel comfortable in taking its first shot at social media success.

This point speaks to a basic misconception that exists with many small business people about the Internet. The misconception is that somehow Internet Marketing requires less effort than traditional marketing. To this I respond with what I tell everyone who thinks there is some get-rich-quick formula that they haven’t yet discovered online: “You get back what you put out!” This is a simple truth that applies to everything in life including Internet Marketing. Another way to put this is “You get what you pay for.”

Fear not! Information is what the Internet is all about. There is literally an unlimited supply of information available online that you can provide to your interested eyeballs (prospects and customers). This will probably require you to change your view about using OPI — Other Peoples Information, and generally force you to take a less parochial view of the manner in which you service your customers’ need for information.

The upshot of this part of the discussion is that in gaining access to “good” content online, you will be presented with the opportunity to think more broadly about your business model. Actually, forced to think more broadly accurately describes the situation that you face. Again I say, fear not! This is opportunity knocking! Openly sharing information is one of the foundational principles that Social Media is based on.

I wrote the following article over 4 years ago and it was published in Business Strategies Magazine. It came up recently in a search result and I re-read it and pondered how, the more things change the more they stay the same. It really speaks to what the “Social Medium” is all about. Read and enjoy!

Like most great principles, integrity gets a lot of lip-service, but it’s seldom a true way of life, especially on the Internet. We have tuned ourselves to distrust what we read and see because frankly, so much of it is spin or an all-out lie. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is… When we hear the word integrity it often congers up an image of a stern and sober school master whose Quaker or Puritan upbringing shows through his innate inability to smile, joke or be happy. But this isn’t what I’m talking about when I say integrity. I am talking about that character quality that doesn’t cut corners or shade the truth, no matter what.

Integrity is the key to success in everything that we do. Integrity is honesty and truth, period. Shakespeare captured the essence of this in Hamlet, when he wrote; “And this above all, to thine own self be true. And it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” If we are honest with ourselves we can’t be dishonest with anyone. If our motto is integrity, we always have what we need. We sleep soundly knowing that we don’t have to worry about what we have said or done.

Translating this principle to your efforts on the Internet is critical as you develop the contents of your website, blog or online communications. Remember that the Internet is the quintessential and ubiquitous communications medium. By design it is everywhere, all the time. The communities that define the Internet, people (all of us) coming together around common interests, have unprecedented access to information, yours and everyone else’s. Therefore, make sure what you publish is honest and true. Simple, right?

The simple truth of the matter is that all of life is governed by the principle of cause and effect. We have all heard this law repeated in various forms from scriptural to cultural; You reap what you sow – For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction – What comes around goes around. Failure to obey this law will result in certain disappointment. This is especially true of the information that you publish and communicate, or the business that you do, on the Internet.

There is a term “Internet Time,” that gets bandied about in relation to the speed with which change occurs or things happen online. I have always correlated this term, or concept, to another very familiar concept, dog years, the 7:1 ratio of the age of a dog to a human. In other words, the dog ages 7 times faster than a human. The correlation is a simple one: Change occurs and things happen 7 times faster on the Internet than they do in the dirt-world.

At a purely pragmatic level, honesty is the best policy. Frankly, it is the only policy online. With the law of cause and effect and the concept of Internet Time in mind, imagine if you will the potential impact of putting information out there that isn’t absolutely true, or doing business online that is not honest according to our previous definition. Understand that this dishonest effort will most certainly bring those “chickens home to roost.” When or how big the unfailing blow will be, nobody can tell. However, you can be sure that “the other shoe will drop.”

By comparison lets look at the upside potential of this example. If the information that you publish and the business that you conduct online is honest and true, it stands to reason that the reward that you will receive will come to you 7 times faster, right? Absolutely! Not only that but just as the punishment always seems to be greater than the crime, the rewards for our Integrity will be out of all proportion to our honest efforts. It is our choice.