I know I’ve written about working on your business as well as in your business, but the message needs to be repeated regularly. It is too easy to fall into the client work mode and forget that we need to keep our businesses and ourselves visible so that we continually attract new clients. We only realize the issue when our pipeline dries up and we’re wondering where the next client is coming from. And with people being more selective in how they spend money, you want to be sure that everything you do provides another reason why someone should do business with you.

Just like I just wrote about a system to keep up with your social media activities, you need a marketing system for your business as well. Here’s a start to the system I use to market my business on a regular basis.

• Book appointments with yourself – Timeblocking is not just marking the time in your calendar. Actually book a meeting as you would a client, setting the time, agenda, and place. Make the meeting an hour or less and assign a topic to work on. Make these appointments at the same time so they become a habit.
• Spend a few minutes on marketing every morning over coffee – While the coffee is brewing and you are enjoying the first cup, take 30 minutes and work on one piece of the marketing plan. Draft a blog post. Check your LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter feeds and accept invitations or write a recommendation.  Update your marketing goals. Work on a marketing message that appeals to your prospect’s pain. Evaluate a current marketing program and determine whether you want to continue.
• Spend an hour surfing the Web – Use the web to check out what people are saying about you. Set up Google Alerts for your name, business name and competitors. This helps you easily keep up with how you are being perceived and how your competition is marketing and positioning themselves. Use this information to compare your marketing and messages to theirs and see if you have differentiated yourself from them.
• Engage an accountability partner – working solo can make it too easy to forget to market. Have someone hold you accountable for marketing your business. Knowing you have a conversation every week with someone who will ask what you accomplished helps keep you focused.
• Write down your goals and keep them visible – don’t work on marketing blindly. Have your goals written down with dates so they keep reminding you of what you said you would accomplish this year. Writing things down does make them real.

Try to make marketing a habit and treat tasks and projects for your business just like you would treat your list of client work. It’s hard – I know. I need to keep this system visible to me as well. By making marketing a priority item on your to do list, the more likely you will get them done.

©2010 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Content Strategy: Helping Your Small Business Blog Stay Visible
2. Develop a Social Media System
3. Reviewing Your Goals

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.

©2010 Masterful Marketing. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Eliminate Social Media Email Clutter
2. Lead Generation: What Works Today
3. Tele-clinic on Marketing using Social Media