This year’s Social Media Marketing World got a lot of people excited about new marketing platforms – Snapchat, Periscope, Facebook Live, etc.  Everywhere you looked among the 3,000+ marketers, podcasters and entrepreneurs, phones were out and cameras were rolling.  But as  fun and exhilarating as it was to try out these new platforms, a very important question must be asked by every entrepreneur, whether they were at SMMW or not:  “Is it right for me to adopt a new platform right now?”

I’m not a big fan of ‘yes or no’ answers. The answer is almost always, it depends!   Gary Vaynerchuk appears to be obsessed with Snapchat. He’s not. He loves attention, and attention right now happens to be on Snapchat. But you are likely not Gary Vee with an audience his size vying for your attention. You are a bootstrapped entrepreneur growing your audience like I am. It takes a lot of effort to get new viewers and listeners on your content. It takes time.

So when is the right time to a adopt a new marketing platform? The answer is: when you have the time to dedicate to it.

Friend, the gist is: you can Snap, Periscope, Blab, whatever, whenever you want. But if you’re expecting a new marketing platform to start producing an ROI, don’t bother with it until you can commit to it in a consistent schedule.  I Periscoped a little bit a few months ago. I didn’t see an ROI because I didn’t have time to come up with a regular schedule and drive my audience to my Periscope profile.  Just because a marketing platform is hot right now, doesn’t mean you will suddenly have a lot of success with it right away. Like everything in business, it will take work, it will take time and it will take patience before you see a lot of success.

I blog, publish videos, podcasts and send out two newsletters because I have worked my way up to having the time to do all of this on a regular schedule.   If you don’t have the time to keep your podcast going, consider working with my team to book your guests. Outsourcing the production of each marketing platform can help you do more, faster.