Many of my readers are busy professionals who don’t have a lot of time for blogging or social media. But marketing is vital, especially if you’re growing a business, want to get found, get known, and get clients.
For those of you who have the bare minimum of time, and still want to get results, here are a few social media tips and tricks I’ve used. I must be doing something right: these tips have resulted in new clients directly from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
1. Use social media.
Even when out-of-office, you can stay connected via social media. If you’ve pre-written your blog posts, and scheduled publish dates, you can easily post links through your social media when new posts appear. Ideally, you should identify a quote or excerpt from your blog and schedule it to automatically post at peak usage time(s). If you don’t have blog posts feeding automatically (“Don’t Fall Prey to Auto-Feeds”), check out HootSuite. This free tool will allow you to customize an introduction, and schedule a blog post feed to several social sites at a time.
2. Join the conversations on Twitter.
Besides driving traffic back to your blog, Twitter is a great tool to help you find, follow and join conversations. Follow up with comments and status updates that mention your field of #expertise and associated #keywords. Check out SocialOomph.com and TweetDeck. These free tools will allow you to set up email keyword alerts. Be sure to include your name, business field of expertise, and associated keywords in your keyword alerts.
3. Create and/or join groups in LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is highly valued for its predominance of business-minded people. Ask a question and get valuable input and connect with people in your field. Answers you receive will help you create blog posts, expand your network, and help you gain credibility.
Hot tip: Be sure to join specialty groups and add to their discussions with short blurbs and a link back to your blog. This has to be done manually, but it can be outsourced to a VA, as long as you monitor for comments and responses. Another hot tip: When creating a link to your post, you can save character spaces by shortening your link. Free shortening tools include: bit.ly / buff.ly / j.mp
4. Use a VA.
There are many low-fee virtual assistants who now specialize in social media management. Some of them are in India, Mexico, and the Philippines so you can keep your costs low. You can also find VAs in the states that bring a lot of value. Either way, a VA can schedule tweets for you at intervals during the day and alert you when you need to respond. (My favorite? Serenity VA.)
Social media sites are designed to help you connect and network, so be sure to monitor them. If you’re using a VA, and I recommend it, don’t make the mistake of turning over all your participation to her or him. Nothing turns off people more than realizing they aren’t connecting with you, but a hired gun.
If you want a recommendation on a VA who specializes in Social Media, just ask; better yet, consider Serenity VA.
What resources do you use to find ideas? What time-saving social media tips can you share for extending the reach of your content marketing and blogs through social media? I’d love to hear from you, contact me here.
Recent Comments