I'm Floyd Hall and welcome to my 7 minute show.
It's time to get beyond free.
And what do I mean by that?
Well, in social media, we all know that it's free to join Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube,
etc.
But at some point in time, I truly believe if you want to grow your enterprise, your
presence, your business, whatever you're focusing on, there's going to have to be a monetary
investment.
Now, many services and platforms offer a free version as well as a pay version.
And they've colloquially branded those intersections as freemium, as in free plus premium.
So you get the free version as well as the premium version.
And what I mean by the end of free or getting beyond free, quote unquote, is that at some
point you're going to need a premium service or you're going to find out that the level
of free is not working for you anymore.
So you're going to have to invest some money and the really easy part about this.
And I know that there's some roadblock about paying for something that was once free.
It doesn't cost a whole lot.
Just a real important part about all of this.
It doesn't cost that much.
In fact, I really believe that for a budget of less than $50 a month, you can really ramp
up your social media reach, the services you can not only provide to your customers or
your fans or whatever, but also for yourself.
This is more about helping you manage yourself better.
So just think about that.
You don't have to pay for every service, but over time it will become apparent which services
you need to pay for.
Now that could be on the administration side, like a HootSuite where you want to pay for
adding a member, a platform like Vimeo where you want to up your features and make them
more flexible.
I mean, there's just ways to go about it in a different way that appeals to just your
specific needs.
So think about that, getting beyond free.
Now that's not to even take into consideration the amount of time that you're going to have
to still spend on social media.
Now that's a whole different ball of wax in terms of administering your presence, making
your videos, making your posts, communicating with your audience and your fans.
That's still going to have to be your time investment or investing in your marketing
to have someone do that for you, but just for the sake of getting the Bear Bones Foundation,
let's get beyond free guys.
All right.
Now moving on to one of my other favorite, I guess new toys or tools going into the mobile
media space and that's QR codes, quick response codes, affectionately known as QR codes.
You've probably seen these small square, black and white barcode looking things.
What QR codes really do is they help you extend your brand, whether it's providing information,
providing more content or just giving your fans and customers a different way to experience
your product.
And one of my favorite things about QR codes is that you can put them anywhere on t-shirts,
on boxes of raisins, almost anywhere.
So I'm really excited about QR codes and how people are going to be using those going forward.
So get a QR code scanner on your smartphone if you have not done so already and take advantage
of this new world of QR codes.
That simple.
Here on my seven minute show, you know how we do it.
We're taking a music break, sit tight and we'll be right back.
This is the 5th.
My forecast is calling for rain but we're still alive.
Yes, we are.
You know the sun's peeking over the clouds and the music's tight.
Drama playin', kick drum, pride as the bass takes flight
Hey, hey, hey, just celebrate tonight
There's reason to feel right
Everyone unite and just celebrate tonight
Stay the child, don't get lost in your worried mind
Doesn't matter what it costs, matters what you find
Forget all of the pressure from all of your dead lies
Hey, hey, hey, just celebrate tonight
I'm Floyd Hall, and you are listening to my 7-Minute Show. Don't forget to share the show on Facebook, on Twitter, on Tumblr, all the places where you find it.
Check us out, and if you have a link to some great information, your favorite artist, your favorite blog, a new designer, share that with us.
Hashtag M7MS, share that with us so that we can highlight that and feature that on our platform here at the G-Cafe.
Check us out, facebook.com, slash the G-Cafe, as well as on Twitter, at the G-Cafe, and on Tumblr, thegcafe.tumblr.com
I'm Floyd Hall, and this has been my 7-Minute Show. Peace up, A-Time down. That's how we do it. Take care, until next time.
