Zero-G Creative

My social media system

Feb 05 2009

Late last week, blogger supreme Chris Brogan (I wonder if he still manifests himself physically or if he’s found a way to fully upload his consciousness to the ‘net) gave us a peak inside his “system” for keeping up with everything social media.

Now I’m not nearly as prolific (or relevant) as Chris or Guy Kawasaki or Duct Tape’s John Jantsch who also blogged his system; I’m just your average small business owner and I make it a priority to participate in social media at a fairly high level because I find it an invaluable networking tool and a vibrant, active community where valuable information, news and advice is being shared constantly. It also gives me the opportunity to create and easily distribute content that is valuable to my clients as well as other entrepreneurs and small business owners. But here’s the thing: it is a big time investment and one that a lot of folks are unwilling to make. Here’s how I do it:

The blog:

I love blogging but I can’t do it twice a day like Brogan. Wish I could though. I try to blog twice a week. They don’t have to be long posts, my only requirement is that they be relevant and useful to someone other than myself. Every now and then I’ll pre-blog a couple of posts if I’m on a good tear and save them for later in the week, but most of the time I do it live. Most of my good writing gets done first thing in the morning before the kids get up. I’ve also been helped much by Stephanie’s contributions, she’s been writing once a week. If anyone wants to be a guest blogger, let me know!

The radio show:

This is new, but it’s been a serious time commitment already and I’m trying to work it into my routine. Every Tuesday at 10AM we’ll be on the air. We also need to book guests, do our prep work and post the weekly podcast. I have a feeling most of the “work” on this (save the booking of guests) will be done over the weekends.

Twitter:

Twitter is really the glue that holds it all together for me. Without Twitter, I would feel completely out of touch. First thing every morning, I answer all my “twitter mail,” responding to messages and sending messages to new followers. Tweetdeck keeps me connected to all the twittery-goodness I need when I’m in front of my computer and I make an effort to read up on what people are talking about several times a day.

I tweet whenever feels natural, whenever I’ve heard something interesting, am working on something interesting, want to respond to something interesting or sometimes just because I feel like sharing which is OK too This has become so much a part of my regular routine that I barely even notice it any more. In fact, I just pulled up my tweetstats and it appears that I tweeted almost 20 times a day on average in January. Sounds like a lot, but really, it didn’t impact my day or take me away from anything important. Tweetdeck makes it easy as does Twitterberry, my blackberry interface.

The most valuable thing for me about Twitter is that it keeps me connected with the world out there when I’m not blogging or otherwise communicating with the rest of the world. It’s like the meat in my social media sandwich.

The other stuff:

I love LinkedIn and I am trying to make it a point of using it more proactively. I’ve found that when you combine LinkedIn with Twitter good things happen and you can make fantastic connections between the two networks. Even without focusing on LinkedIn, I usually check in about once a day just to see what people are up to.

I’m also on Facebook, but it’s definitely a low priority. I usually go in there about once a week and otherwise just respond to friend requests and other messages/comments that people leave for me.

All in all, social media represents a few solid hours a week of proactive time investment. If anyone else out there has any helpful tips on using social media, please feel free to contribute!

Published by Erik Wolf under Small Business, Strategy, Web/Interactive