Crap social media efforts fall into two categories: Ritalin Crash and The Corpse. Ritalin Crash fills the world with sporadic bursts of activity and The Corpse sets up a million profiles before leaving them as lifeless tokens to a long lost enthusiasm.
Avoid this with a daily routine:
Write your blog. Ok, it’ll take more than 10 minutes to write a whole post but adding to the idea pile or banking time will get the job done. Also, it doesn’t have to be brilliant, think of it as a monolog rather than Shakespeare’s second coming.
Comment on blogs. Look up blogs in your field through Blogcatalog or Technorati and comment. Participating in conversations will, in turn, build readers for your blog.
Get on Twitter. The principle is simple: participate in conversations and share what you know. Compare the amount of emails you write a day to a few 140 character updates and the task won’t seem so irksome.
Add people. Search for likeminded folk on Tweepsearch, find a client worthy of a reschmooze on LinkedIn or give your music neighbour some love on last.fm.
Aggregate. Connect your various profiles via RSS feeds to post to one and distribute to all. Get your social media communication ready to go in one burst and post at different times using Hootsuite for your Twitter account or WordPress/Blogger for your blog.
Follow up. Go to an event last night? Post a photo on the event page, email your business card pile or sign up for the next one.
Got your own tips for the pile or approach the task in a different way? Share!
Top tips Anna, post comments on blogs you read huh? Great idea… .
I always remind clients to keep it simple and achievable and to measure everything they can as they go along – like number of tweets they send out, number of RTs, friends on Facebook, fans on Facebook, sales, click throughs from tweets on bit.ly, incoming calls I receive, etc.
The measurement routine can take up one or two of their ten or twenty minutes but can begin to guide their work by reflecting what their audience is interested in as well as helping pick out trends.
How did I do?
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Brilliant, thanks Mark. Measurement is crucial and there’s enough pointers in there for a whole new post!
Compare of?
Whoooooops. Thanks for the nudge!
So easy to read harder to get done i have created a little weekly check list to help me keep on track.
Good work. You’ll be the Fabio of the social media world in no time.
All great tips, Anna. Like some other programmers out there, I get obsessed with one thing for a while and can do nothing else, then that thing gets overtaken by “the new shiny” and off I go. Consistency is the key that still eludes me!
Thanks John. Have you heard of Storify? http://storify.com/
G’bye afternoon…!