How To Define One’s Social Media Engagement Strategy
Social media engagement can be such an overwhelming task(s). What to add, which ones must you use and knowing how, when, where, and why to engage. And, of course this must be done in addition to your day job and your family life. I’ve just spent over 30 minutes bouncing around in tweet-land this morning. I decided to go from TweetDeck to HootSuite, partly because I didn’t like how TweetDeck showed up on my iPhone(of course I failed to compare the new one with the old on the phone first!). This presents a new learning curve for me- so far I’ve only gone as far as setting up Twitter. But it was the basic reason I was at HootSuite, so mission accomplished! The tweet excursion was about finding good gems, connecting and building new relationships. I hope to benefit in a number of ways- I’ve found a new follower who I want to be engaged with, I’m getting more local exposure, and I found a cool new blog that I think will provide useful tips for my writing career.
I’m also getting more engaged in Facebook, not because I love it but because others use it frequently and I can’t afford to miss those opportunities. The timing was right as a local communications group invited locals to post their blogs on their Facebook page. A win-win as it only took a few minutes to do that.
The balancing act here is knowing how far to go and when you’ve hit that point between value and vanishing returns. Know what I mean? You’re reading links and making the 100th bookmark and then you look at the clock. Yikes, where did the time go! I’m going to schedule a particular time of the day, every day, to expand my knowledge about available social media opportunities for promoting my freelance work. And, by assigning it a prominent place on the list, I’ve acknowledged my commitment and the value of this kind of engagement. Maybe, I’ll figure out a way to track the benefits in a way that reinforce the time spent?
Building a social media platform for one’s work is crucial. The time spent should be somewhat equal to the returns…depending on how you define them. What I’m realizing is the many ways to do self-promotion-some more labor intensive than others. The more I learn about marketing the more possibilities I see. It’s no longer as simple as handing out a business card, or putting a signature tag on email. The world is too competitive now and we have to find ways to stand out, to stand above the crowd.
On a scale of 1 to 10 where do you stand on social media, in terms of your engagement? By today’s standards I’m probably hovering between a 4 and 5.
I would say that I’m probably a 7 or 8. I have Facebook of course, MySpace (which I hardly ever get on), Xboxfaces.com, & 2 Twitter accounts. One personal & one to promote my social site that I built (www.japslap.com)! Between all those & my blog…stay pretty engaged!
hey, sorry to take so long… you were in my spam box!!
a 7-8 sounds pretty good. I’m impressed… how do you manage to find the time for all of that? Are you pretty active on FB and Twitter?
Yea, sorry…I set up an e-mail at Yahoo for my blog since I got it it’s own domain now & I put that e-mail in here this time instead of old one that you had! Yea, I’m pretty regular on those 2, but really just to pump my site. Not on them very long when I do hit them. Wish mine was as big as them….that’s what I’m shooting for…LOL
Well, aren’t we all looking for more engagement!
Yea…my personal thing on Twitter is @pancake415 if you want to follow me!
I’ve recently taken the social media dive and am finding it a huge time drain – which for me is a big problem, I have barely the time to get my writing goals in let along build a social network global empire. Twitter has been fun, I know I’m not getting everything out of it that I could, but that will come with time, hopefully, maybe.
The crazy things we do to to build a platform!
I Twitter @tsuchigari
The crazy things we do is right! But it seems like a necessary evil. @WalkerThornton (smile)
I am a 1 with social networking. I have facebook because my family and friends do, but that’s it. I jumped on the twitter bandwagon way early and ended up with a few thousand followers. I quite it all, cold turkey and haven’t looked back. I don’t see a difference at all – it was taking me away from building up my websites on the search engines, and my writing career in general. Now that I stopped I just focus on my business instead… writing content, article marketing, and taking on some “fun writing” tasks.
My sales and things are exactly the same and all social networking served for me was as a platform to waste time. I have a busy life outside of my business, and my husband and I travel a lot – I couldn’t keep up. It came down to “have a life” or “pretend to have a life on the social sites as I sat there and spent time on them”. I was never able to find a balance.
Hi Katherine and welcome,
Thanks for giving such an honest answer. I certainly don’t know what the answer is for social media, I think much of it depends on your goals and whether that kind of connection will help or not. It sounds like you made the best choice for you.
I’m having fair success on Twitter. I’ve been on it for a couple years now but only recently, with my new blog, got the right audience and some interaction.
Facebook is a total waste of time at the moment. I don’t know how to use it as marketing leverage.
One thing at a time, I guess. There is so much to do and learn and conquer – where will it stop?
Where will it stop? Good question.
I think you’re right, it can be complicated trying to do too many things too quickly. I have yet to fully master Facebook myself; as of late I’ve been working on polishing my LinkedIn profile and organizing my Twitter world.
I think that I’m a 4-5 as well, but since I have two little ones, it can be a real challenge. I finally made the jump from my “personal” twitter name (@rivkisilver) to my “brand” name (@marriedlane).
I’m still toying with the idea of making myself a Facebook page just for the blog, but I think I’m going to wait until the summer, when I’m hoping to do the jump to a self-hosted WP page, and a pretty new branding makeover.
I’ve also found guest posting and blog carnivals to be a useful and relatively low-maintenance way to network as well.
This is my first visit and just wanted to stop by and say hello everyone!