Social Media – Where do I start?

This social media guide is designed to provide you with a focused list of personal initiatives that you can attempt to tackle in 45 minutes each day to promote the social media strategy for your organization.

The key to success with social media is to create and maintain active relationships with others. It’s about conversations and the exchange of ideas and information. Just like real life, your digital life requires attention and participation.

DAILY MAINTENANCE
Estimated Time to Complete: 10 mins
Visit the profiles that you are responsible for and scan for interactions. You may find questions directed to you, connection requests from new contacts, or topics posed by your existing connections that you can respond to.

• Accept/Decline/Ignore new contact requests
• Respond to all direct messages
• Search for mentions (@username) and join the conversation

SHARING
Estimated Time to Complete: 20 mins
Post to your profiles to share relevant developments at your organization or to share news about the industry in general.

• Post 5 original posts to each profile throughout the day
• Reply or comment on 5 posts made by your friends/followers
• Share corporate news, industry news, showcase a client’s success, introduce a team member to your friends/followers
• Scan your favorite industry sites for relevant news to share in an update or blog post

NETWORKING
Estimated Time to Complete: 15 mins
Make new connections every day by monitoring the conversations within your group of contacts or using the search feature on the social network.

• Connect to 5 new people each day that interest you
• Connect to 5 new people each day that you think YOU can help
• Connect to 5 new people each day that have replied to one of your posts or the posts of your friends/followers

What’s the value of your efforts over the course of a full year?
If we assume 20 working days a month and 12 months a year, then that would yield 240 work days a year. Based on that calculation at a minimum you would create the following:

• 1200 original posts on each profile
• 1200 replies
• 1200 new interesting contacts
• 1200 new contacts that you can help
• 1200 new active contacts

Of course, your networks should be significantly larger than that due to the network effect – people will find you as well based on your posts and the dialogue that you have created with others. If you blog in addition to the activities outlined above, you will need to devote additional time to crafting a few posts each week. It is hard for most people to find time to post to a blog every day, but you can assume that a well conceived blog post will require at least an hour to complete. The good news is that a great blog post is a perfect thing to share with your friends and followers online and can be linked to from your Tweets or Status Updates.

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Related articles:

1. Social media success: Science or Personality?
2. Are Social Media Consultants Neccessary? Part 2
3. How We Use Social Media
4. Managing your social media expectations
5. Are Social Media Consultants Neccesary?