Is the clock running out on your social media use?
Introduction: Marketing Through Social Networking Without the Insanity
Social networking: you know you oughtta do it. But the time it takes is enough to strike fear into the hearts of even the most productive solos. How can you do all this networking/Twitter/Facebook stuff and still run your business?
We’re looking at this topic in depth in our “Ten Rules to Successfully Manage Your Time in Social Networking Activities” series. You can navigate through all the posts in this series through the links above and at the bottom of the post.
In today’s post we’re looking at ways technology can help you streamline and automate your social marketing efforts without losing the feature of social media that makes it so effective: the highly personal and immediate nature of its communications outlets.
Rule #6: Take Advantage of Tools to Automate & Streamline
Similar to rule #4′s suggestion about creating systems, this rule is specific to your social networking activities. There are hundreds of applications out there that can make those tasks literally effortless. Investigate those applications and implement them into your social networking strategy.
The problem? There are hundreds of tools out there. How do you get started? As always, I recommend “minimum effort, maximum results.” Start by looking at your use of social marketing sites. Which ones do you use regularly? Look for tools that work across those platforms wherever possible. Why install three apps when one will do?
Next, think about how you use each of those sites. Which aspects of social networking are troubling you in particular? Is it following people on Twitter? Look for apps that implement automatic following. Is it sending out tweets about your blog posts? TweetMeme works well for me but there are other options, too. Do you want to schedule your tweets? There are apps for that, too. Is it finding people to follow? Lots of options there.
(There are so many options, in fact, that I’m planning a mega-post in the next week (after this series is over) to outline the best apps I’ve found for Twitter. Stay tuned, and subscribe to our feed at TIS to get that post first.)
Some suggestions just to get you started:
- Tweetdeck. Seriously, I don’t know how anyone manages Twitter without it. Now with the ability to support multiple accounts, Tweetdeck makes Twitter and Facebook sing.
- Another option: twhirl – works for multiple social platforms.
- WordPress.com’s automatic Twitter feature. In the latest version of WordPress.com (NOT the standalone WordPress I recommend but rather the free hosted version), you can select a feature to automatically send out a tweet with details about each new post.
- For those of you who use grown-up WordPress on your own hosting account (good for you), you can accomplish the same thing with Twitter Updater, a plug-in.
- To help others share your blog posts via Twitter, look into Tweet Meme. That’s what we’ve got installed on The Inspired Solo.
There are tons of apps out there — mostly for Twitter, but many are cross-platform as well. You could go nuts just researching this one topic.
My advice: Don’t reinvent the wheel. Ask your friends what they’re using and find most useful. Do a little searching on “top recommended social networking apps” — not as a way to abrogate your own responsibility and input, but as a shortcut to get a consensus of what others who do this stuff a lot are thinking. Then use that input as one factor to decide on your own approach.
But Don’t Let the Social Networking Tools Rob You of Your Personality
The great thing about tools is that they remove the barriers to interaction. But if used indiscriminately, they can go too far and take the valuable part of social networking marketing — your unique you-ness — out of the equation.
How do you keep that from happening? There aren’t any easy answers. But I do have some suggestions.
- Remember who’s on the other end of that tweet. The simple act of sending out a Facebook status update or a tweet is not the goal here. Keep in mind whose on the receiving end of your updates and tweets — people. If you want to motivate people to do something, you have to reach them by reaching out to them. Personally. Kindly. Interestingly.
- Remember your goals. You’re not after sheer quantity of numbers here. You want the right people — your ideal clients — to go to your site and take a specified action (your conversion metric) — whether that’s picking up the phone and making an appointment for a consultation, or signing up for your email newsletter, or downloading your ebook.
- This is not a virtual game of War. You remember that card game? Where whoever ends up with the most cards wins the game? That’s not this. You will not become successful simply by virtue of the number of followers you attract or the frequency of your updates.
- All networking — including social networking — is about building and protecting relationships. In fact, I really hate that word — “networking.” I truly do. I detest it with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. Because it obscures the truth, is why. The truth: that what we mean by “networking” is building relationships. We’re not after collecting the most business cards at the local bar mixer. Those hundreds of little rectangles won’t put one hot dime in your pocket if you don’t build a relationship with the people who gave ‘em to you!
Embrace the nature of social networking by focusing on the small scale — the individuals sitting in front of their laptops and holding their mobile devices who are receptive to your reaching-out efforts. It sounds counterintuitive — that we increase our clientele by focusing on such a small-scale activity — but I promise, it works.
And the opposite approach — treating your social networking as one great big monologue, you pitching yourself loudly and obnoxiously to the world at large — I can promise you that’s not gonna work nearly as well. You might get clients just because of the law of scale, but will they be the ideal clients for you? Almost certainly not.
So use those tools wisely, mi compadre. But keep your awesomeness front and center at all times.
