A year prior to my taking social media seriously, my really smart friends kept telling me, "Christine - you have to engage in social media".
But every time I saw them, they would talk about yet another new tool, another new site, another something for me to take the time to wrap my head around.
It was so overwhelming, that I just did nothing because I did not know where to start.
Every time I would listen to a teleclass, or read an article, I was more confused that ever.
So in September I decided to jump in.
Up until that time I had set up accounts in Twitter, FB and Linkedin, but never did much beyond that.
Now, it was time for me to embrace it and see what all the fuss was about.
My next 3 steps were: develop a plan, execute the plan and maintain the plan.
The plan was to give 90-95% relevant information to my followers and friends, engage in conversations to develop relationships, and spend, at most, 30 minutes a day on social media.
To execute the plan, I created an account in ping.
fm and linked my 3 sites Twitter, FB and Linked-In so that one post in ping.
fm, fed to all three sites at the same time.
I then created an account in hootsuite.
com, which linked to ping.
fm and allows me to post updates at a future time and date to all of my sites.
If you post an update to hootsuite.
com right now, you can have it sent an hour from now or 2 months from now.
I have a word document with my posts that I cut and past into hootsuite.
com.
As of today, I have posts going out to all 3 of my sites from now until April 8th, 3 times a day, Monday through Friday, and they are all different.
This is a few hours worth of work, but well worth it.
Daily maintenance is adding comments to other people's posts, joining groups, following people and adding friends.
By working my plan, I have increased my followers on Twitter by 88% in a little more than 4 months, gotten to know some business colleagues better, "met" new ones and have been given some new opportunities through social media.
There is much more to learn, but take heart, it is easier when you start small and commit to making your time on social media productive.
But every time I saw them, they would talk about yet another new tool, another new site, another something for me to take the time to wrap my head around.
It was so overwhelming, that I just did nothing because I did not know where to start.
Every time I would listen to a teleclass, or read an article, I was more confused that ever.
So in September I decided to jump in.
Up until that time I had set up accounts in Twitter, FB and Linkedin, but never did much beyond that.
Now, it was time for me to embrace it and see what all the fuss was about.
My next 3 steps were: develop a plan, execute the plan and maintain the plan.
The plan was to give 90-95% relevant information to my followers and friends, engage in conversations to develop relationships, and spend, at most, 30 minutes a day on social media.
To execute the plan, I created an account in ping.
fm and linked my 3 sites Twitter, FB and Linked-In so that one post in ping.
fm, fed to all three sites at the same time.
I then created an account in hootsuite.
com, which linked to ping.
fm and allows me to post updates at a future time and date to all of my sites.
If you post an update to hootsuite.
com right now, you can have it sent an hour from now or 2 months from now.
I have a word document with my posts that I cut and past into hootsuite.
com.
As of today, I have posts going out to all 3 of my sites from now until April 8th, 3 times a day, Monday through Friday, and they are all different.
This is a few hours worth of work, but well worth it.
Daily maintenance is adding comments to other people's posts, joining groups, following people and adding friends.
By working my plan, I have increased my followers on Twitter by 88% in a little more than 4 months, gotten to know some business colleagues better, "met" new ones and have been given some new opportunities through social media.
There is much more to learn, but take heart, it is easier when you start small and commit to making your time on social media productive.
Source...