Time Drain, Heat Exhaustion, Getting Off Track With My Social Media Calendar!

Ok, I it was 110 degrees at one point in Riverside, California so I had no thoughts of doing any type of work, for clients or my businesses. It was just to damn hot! So what did I do? Surfed the universe of social media instead of driving to the beach. Yes this was much easier than trying to concentrate on anything else, even in the comfort of my air conditioned home office, i just couldn't get over the heat.

As I jumped from blog to blog, tweet to tweet, connection to connection, and fan page to fan page (ok, so I covered blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook) I realized how much of a rabbit hole I had gotten into. And what did I learn? A lot! And here are my rough statistics.

1. In less than 5 minutes on HootSuite, I saw over 300 tweets on my two business accounts @concentricmktg, @gayincognito. That was in 5 minutes. I didn't say I read all of them, that is what I saw scroll past my eyes. That's 300 tweets from all of my Tweeps (not sure that's the right term). Now multiple that by all of their Tweeps that are following them and you get the picture. Insane!!!! But I got good blog ideas and made some quick connections.  Ok, so it took more like 30 minutes to do all that.
   
2. In a little over an hour I visited more than 100 blogs, read about 50 posts, commented on 10 and found ideas for my blog. Ok, so a little more productive. Oh and made a couple of connections.
   
3. Visited Linkedin, responded to my "In Box" messages, did a quick run through my groups, commented and ticked a few people off with my comments - another 30 minutes.
4. Did my part of being an active Facebook user (defined as visiting the site at least once per month and have over 130 friends), commented, posted updates, and used Facebook as a search engine - 1 hour plus.

So you ask, what is my point? While I fully support Social Media, unless it is over 100 degrees out and you have nothing better to do, then have a plan for using Social Media to grow your business. Ok, so I gave myself liberty today and went outside of my normal process.  And what is that process? Here it is really quickly:

• Tweet 10 - 20 valuable Tweets per day - focus being "Valuable Tweets" - for my sites. Divided up between three time slots per day - Morning, Mid-Day, Evening - should only take 10 minutes at most per session, so 30 minutes total.
• Check-In on LinkedIn twice per day. Only post one status update, use a calendar to check on groups and comment on two group postings per day. Total time - less 15 minutes. Post a question for a group or in a status update add 5 minutes.
  
• Make 2 new LinkedIn connections a day that you add value to. If you add value to the connection then they will connect back to you...hopefully with value. - Less than 15 minutes.
• Touch base with Facebook Friends - this is off the clock for the most part unless you are connecting back to a friend that has commented on one of your "Pages." I use, as most of you probably do, Page for my businesses. Review comments, make sure my blogs fed to the pages, answer any discussion questions, post any updates, thank people for "Liking" a page. Time spent - 15 minutes at most.
• Writing my blog posts 20 - 30 minutes per three blogs but each blog has it's day. Ok so I am cheating because research time isn't in there, but I plan my posts out on the weekend or when I have down time.

Sum total for a day of social media 2 hours split throughout the day in three segments of 30 to 40 minutes each...if even that. Most the time, I spend less than 1.5 hours per day.

So that's how you manage Social Media...or at least that's how I do it.

Freemium "Pages" For Facebook - Pagemodo!

Ok, so this "Freemium" thing seems to be hot! Just check out Wikipedia, @peterfroberg, Freemium Summit! And as a small business owner, personal brand, or even a major corporation, you just might find yourself saying "Everything in life is FREE!" (probably not, but there are a lot of Freemiums) The stable of "Freemium" apps, tools and products seems to reproduce in nanoseconds. So it's time for you to jump on the bandwagon and get some free stuff to grown your business, followers, fans, and connections.

But a little Wiki definition first. A Freemium is a business model that works by offering basic Web services, or a basic down-loadable digital product, for free, while charging a premium for advanced or digital features. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium). So now that we've got that out of the way, here's a new (just a couple of months on the market) "Freemium" from Pagemodo to help you create a Killer Facebook Page without needing to know Facebook Markup Language (FBML).

What I like about it is a) the starter level is FREE, b) to upgrade to the next level (perfect for small businesses) is low-cost, and c) there is an agency model for re-sellers. Get all the detail! And "coming soon" there will be integration to Google Analytics (at least for the Pro and Agency Model subscriptions).

So if you really want to tap into Facebooks 500 Million users (ok so they haven't updated their site but the 500M is all the news), consider using Pagemodo to customize your pages for small business, personal brands and your corporation. Also, read an in-depth review by Orli Yakuel at Tech Crunch!

And watch the video, then tell me what you think!

Pagemodo Pagebuilder - Facebook Pages from Pagemodo Video on Vimeo.

Linked In vs. Twitter - Where do they merge?

If you're playing in the social media space as a personal brand or business, more than likely you are on LinkedIn (for business connections) and Twitter (to build a following that leads to new customers)...or that would be the basic theories. And this could be argued "100 Ways To Sunday" as to where the two converge. So maybe I'm just so inundated with thoughts that I missed this concept, but until today, I never thought about "Are connections on LinkedIn annoyed by my twitter posts?"

Now, I do not Twitter constantly, but I do a fair amount. And I have my Twitter Posts feeding to both Facebook and Twitter..."but, is that annoying my friends and connections?" I raise this question only because it was brought to my attention by @greigwells during a #SMMU session today on using "Advanced Twitter Techniques." This was part of the series being offered by Social Media Magic University and it really caused me to pause and think..."Are people getting annoyed with Twitter posts being fed to Facebook and LinkedIn profiles?"

I'm curious...you?

Thanks Greig for causing me to pause and think about this!

So everyone else...what's your thoughts?

When All Else Fails Marketing!

Thanks to my friend Edie The Entertainer (she's the host of Cirque du Soleil's Zumanity in Las Vegas), for sharing this image on Facebook and giving me something to blog about at the end of the week.

Straight forward, raw, guerrilla marketing at it's best...can I call it a week and have a cocktail now?