How to Find Balance Between Talking the Talk and Walking the Walk as Digital Marketer

Digital marketing is a business that includes learning, talking and doing.

Each one of these aspects has importance. You can’t get far without networking, constant learning or actually working on your marketing. However, these three activities must be in the correct proportions.

Finding the golden ratio between them is not so easy, as we tend to emphasize one aspect of marketing according to our personal predisposition. I will now explain the three traps of imbalanced digital marketing and how to find the balance between those activities.

Trap 1: Too much talking

Talking, sharing ideas and networking is important, but it can get out of hand sometimes. When I started my digital marketing career, I tended to talk too much about it. A lot of my friends believed that trying to make money from monetizing blog traffic or affiliating is doomed to failure. They were missing out on a lot of opportunities. I felt like I had to help them and teach them everything I knew.

Maybe I helped some of them and made a few connections along the way. However, the benefits I got from sharing, in terms of good ideas and networking, were minimal in comparison to the loss in motivation and waste of energy. So there are times when it’s better to focus on doing and learning.

Trap 2: Too much learning

Learning a lot can also be a great way to be ineffective in marketing. I have a developer friend who is a genius in his field. He can write a Ph.D. about every little aspect of server management and email client installation and stuff that is all Chinese to me.

Well, he got fired a year ago and is still struggling to find work. His problem is that he is obsessive about learning. A task that would take another system developer an hour takes him a day, since he can’t proceed without learning everything and testing all the features and options. Digital marketers can fall into this as well.

Every day there are new tools and features launched, new trends and marketing channels, new networks and marketing strategies. I often get caught knowing much more than doing. Digital knowledge that you don’t use immediately can easily become a waste of time since it might be irrelevant by the time you need it.

Trap 3: Too much doing

Then there are the doing-type people who just do and do without knowing enough what they are doing. It seems like it would be hard to be too active and committed, but often this “get it done” attitude means a lack of flexibility or common sense.  I know natural doers who wasted months of work on strategies that were not effective and even harmful.

The golden mean / How to find balance

The golden mean or golden middle way is the path between two extremes. It’s not a static thing. At times, you should study a lot and upgrade your understanding, like when doing SEO in the middle of a big Google update. At other times, you should network and investigate, like when you can’t find any strategy to really breakthrough your campaigns.

But more often or not, doing is the major factor. I would say that studying and talking for a day in a week and working for four days is a good ratio in most cases. Personal capacities and predispositions affect this formula.

A quick doer should invest more time in studying, while a fast learner should invest more in doing. Exactly how to find a balance between these factors changes all the time. Be attentive and sincere with yourself, and you will find the perfect proportion for you.