Social networking is a vital marketing tool for businesses today. However, it can take a lot of time to stay on top of all of your social networks. You want to make sure that you?re active on the sites but that you do not waste so much time using them that you are compromising the rest of your productivity. For this reason, it?s important to learn to streamline social networking. This is done by reducing the number of social networks that you use,?relying on?posting tools and setting aside a specific amount of time per day for social networking. You may also want to consider hiring someone to assist with your social networking.
Reduce your Number of Social Networks
The key to social networks is really that you?re highly active on the site. You need to get to know people on each site and to comment back and forth with them for social networking to be effective. For this reason, it?s more important to focus your social networking attention on just 2 or 3 sites than it is to make sure that you are present on all of them. The?major social networks right now are Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn is also important for some industries. Whittle down your number of accounts to just these key networks.
Use Posting Tools
You want to make use of the tools that are available to you to streamline your social networking posts. For example, you can set all blog posts to automatically be sent to Twitter using a service like TwitterFeed. You can also schedule automatic services for Twitter (including automatic following and various updates) using services like TweetLater. Another good posting tool is Ping.FM which can be used to update all of your social networks at once. All of these tools streamline your social networking and increase productivity.
Limit the Amount of Time You Spend on Social Networking
Reducing the number of social networks that you use and relying on posting tools allows you to decrease the amount of time that you spend on daily social networking. The time that is left should be scheduled so that you?re focused when doing your networking. You may want to set aside 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at the end of the day to do all social networking including replying to messages and friending new people. Alternatively you may do it all in one hour during the middle of the day. Use a schedule that works for you but keep updates and notifiers turned off the rest of the time because they distract you from your other activities.
Hire a Social Networking Guru
An alternative option to streamlining your social networking is to consider hiring someone else to do it all for you. If you don?t enjoy the process of social networking and you find that it is taking up too much of your time then you can work with a professional to keep the networks updated. Bloggers and social media professionals are increasingly beginning to offer this as a service.
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It’s true…If you want to promote your business through social networks than you must dedicate a lot of time and you must never spam your friends. I have 2 favorites social networks and i use them not only for creating partnerships and opportunities but also for personal use.
Just curious Koren, what are those two you frequently use?
So my favorite is Stumble Upon and i use it all the time: at work, home even when i’m visiting my friends. And second is Reddit, a great social site that needs a lot of “love” and quality information.