Social Media Specialist Joanne Burgess

Clock’s Ticking and You Haven’t Even Looked At Your Social Media Sites Today?

Prospects and Clients raise the concern about finding the time to commit to Social Media. After all, we are all busy professionals and many times it’s difficult to get done what needs doing in a day.  As a Social Media Specialist Virtual Assistant, I am here to help clients stay on track.  For some of them, it requires setting up a blog,  publishing and syndicating blog posts and ongoing maintenance.  For others it’s a question of setting up social media profiles and optimizing them correctly.  Some people just need mentoring sessions to give support and suggestions.  In many cases, it’s all of the above.   What I don’t do, is sit there and send tweets for my clients all day long.  It is important for each and every client to jump in and share in the responsibility of promoting their own business.  Why? Because your prospect and client base want to get to know who YOU are both as a person and as a business entity.

Personally, I choose to take the first half hour of my work day to personally work ON my business instead of IN my business.  When it comes to my social media sites, here are my top 5 ways to invest my time each day.

Facebook

Facebook can be maintained in just a few minutes each day.    So every morning, I log on and update the following things:

• Change my status
• Read and comment on other peoples’ status
• Acknowledge birthdays
• Expand my reach by fanning business pages or growing my friend list

In this way, I stay current in the goings on in my friend and fan base and stay top of mind in the news feed.  This also helps to grow my own base.  Of course there are the additional postings for my blog and other links that occur when appropriate.

LinkedIn

I try and grow my network each week.  I visit the People You May Know area and request connections.  I also update my status and ensure that my blog is feeding properly into the application and that any events that I might be hosting are up to date.  I also take the time to scan over the discussion threads that have been posted to the groups that I am mainly interested in to see if I can add value to any of the discussions. This all helps to keep me in the news feed.

Twitter

I update Twitter several times a day.  I use Tweetdeck as my dashboard and it stays open on my desktop. I use it as a water cooler. I pop in, check for and Re-tweet interesting links, answer questions people have asked and update my followers on what I am up to.   And it’s not a huge investment of time.  The important thing is to stay focused and Twitter has given me many great new business contacts.

Helpful tip: For all of these sites, ping.fm is my friend. I log on each day to update my status and ping.fm will post that updated status to all three sites with the click of one button. This is a huge time saver. You’ll want to check it out too.

Blogs

I try and read a few other blogs each day.   I also try and comment where I can to add value and to increase traffic back to my own blog.  I also blog once a week. Should I blog more? Probably. The recommendation is 2 to 3 times a week. I can only seem to find the time to blog once.  That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you try and stay consistent with the timing. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best time to post a new blog.  So try and find a good day for you and stick with it!

Stats and Google

Each day, I spend a couple of minutes looking at my stats and at Google to see what impact my social media sites are having on my business. I like to know where the traffic is coming from and find out what is  resonating best with my followers. I also check Google to see where I sit in the rankings.   Being found is a major component of growing your business and it’s important to know how SEO works.  The social media sites are very heavily indexed in Google, so investing in the right sites is key.

Overall, this might sound like a lot of time, but in reality, it doesn’t take long when you stay focused and get into a routine. A few minutes of your time each day should bring you many rewards in the Social Media realm.  Could you spend more time? Absolutely! I could spend all day chatting and getting lost in the myriad of games and distractions on many of these sites.  But if you understand what it is that you are trying to achieve with the use of these social media tools and keep them top of mind, you can get a lot done in a short amount of time.  It doesn’t hurt to find a Social Media Specialist VA to help you establish a strategy, get properly set up and provide some ongoing support.  That’s what we’re here for!

If you are new to Social Media and you’d like to get an overview of these applications, I’m running an information evening, Tuesday, October 27th at 6:30 pm at the East Gwillimbury Civic Centre for those of you who are in the north Toronto area. Please feel free to contact me directly (any social media site will do!) to register for this event.

So…What do you do each day to stay on track?  Share some of your tactics! I love getting feedback, and you get a bonus!  I offer comment luv here on my blog…By leaving a comment, you will be able to link back to your own site…great for SEO Look forward to hearing from you!

While physically located in Newmarket, Ontario where Joanne lives with her family, as a VA, she is virtually yours anywhere….

Tags: Administration, Business, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, outsource, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, VA, Virtual Assistant