When explaining to someone the value that social media marketing and social networking can add to their business (and maybe even lives in general) I often hear “I just don’t have the time to keep up with all of that stuff”, or something to that effect. Well, maintaining a social networking presence and building relationships through social media outlets isn’t as daunting of a task as it may seem.
Chris Brogan recently posted a blog outlining 19 Presence Management Chores You COULD Do Every Day. I would say that these are 19 things you should do everyday to develop and maintain quality relationships via the social-sphere. I have printed this list out and have also added it to my daily tasks list. I typically spend the last hour of the day making sure that I have checked off all of these items.
I am also a big proponent, for the sake of personal branding, of creating and updating profiles on every single social networking site that I can find. When I tell people this, they say, how do you keep up with all of that, that’s impossible. Well, there are a few tools that I use that make it all more manageable.
I use Tweetdeck to keep track of all of my Twitter connections. It is a pretty robust tool that allows me to keep track of tweets, send and receive direct messages, and retweet/reply to tweets all on one screen. It also has a URL shortener built in for quick tweeting of blog posts, articles etc.
I use FriendFeed to aggregate the feeds of my friends on all the various networks that I am on so that I don’t have to switch from site to site to keep track of what everyone is doing.
Finally, I use Ping.fm to send status updates (often from my Blackberry) to all of the social networks that I belong to.
Utilizing these three tools throughout the day and making sure to spend at least an hour a day checking off Chris’ list is very manageable for me.
Is an hour a day too much time to spend building, developing and maintaining relationships with people that can enrich your life and bolster your business? You tell me…
