Develop a Social Media System

Some people just are organized. Others need a bit of help staying focused. When it comes to managing your time given all the social media activities, the small business owner can get more than overwhelmed. I often get asked how I keep up with all of my social media activities and still get client work done (which does pay the bills!).

Two of the experts have provided their social media “systems”, showing you how they approach these activities.

• John Jantsch started this with his My Social Media System post and then asked others to share their systems as well.
• Chris Brogan then responded to being tagged by John and shared his workflow system.

As you can see, these two systems are very different and work for them. The point of both of their posts is to create a system that works for you, refine it as needed and eventually your social media strategy will become a habit. So let’s thank the above two folks (and others who have responded to John’s initial request) for suggesting we write down and share our systems, as I’m sure doing so will help us stick with it and make it a habit.

What helps me is to use my laptop for social media tools. It sits next to me on my desk with TweetDeck, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Friendfeed and other applications open in their own window so they don’t interfere with my client work that is on my desktop. I monitor these tools using the following system.

Daily:

Morning:

1. Check LinkedIn each morning for updates and questions
2. Check Facebook each morning for updates
3. Check Friendfeed and update my status across the social networks 

Continuous:

1. Check Twitter using TweetDeck every couple of hours (easy to organize groups and searches). Being open on the laptop, I can glance over to see who’s chatting and if interesting, join in.
2. Check email every couple of hours (clients send requests via email)
3. Monitor Friendfeed for updates and interesting conversations

Evening:

1. Scan Google Alerts blog feeds via Google Reader
2. Respond to Twitter followers – I check their profile to see if I want to follow back
3. Respond to LinkedIn connection requests
4. Respond to Facebook Friend requests
5. Subscribe to new friends on Friendfeed

Weekly (usually weekends):

1. Write blog posts for the week – schedule them to be published in the coming week
2. Tweak profiles across the many social media accounts
3. Check Webmaster tools for errors, issues needing fixing
4. Check Google analytics for information on traffic
5. Write a recommendation for a contact in LinkedIn, request one in return
6. Respond to other social media invitations

Being visible and participating in social media, like all marketing activities, takes time to reap the rewards. But if you come up with a system, and as John says, “work it day in and day out”, you will begin to understand what social media can and will do for your business as part of your marketing strategy.

Update: 2/14/09 – as I scanned my feed headlines in Google Reader I realized I didn’t incorporate reading and commenting on blogs into my personal social media system. That activity is normally part of my day and I will take a few minutes each morning and evening to scan, read those whose headline draws me in and comment when I have something to say. I also watch Twitter for notices of blog posts that seem interesting to me.

As with all plans, they are living and need to be modified. I will keep monitoring my use of social media and write an update to this as the system evolves.