Maintaining a Facebook page, a Twitter account, YouTube channel, a blog, etc. can be extremely overwhelming. Social media can quickly begin consuming more and more of your day. You may find that the majority of your work hours consist of reading, commenting and posting relatively useless info. With this information overload, it’s easy to get distracted.
Worse yet, I often notice people automating the entire process through services like Hootsuite and Ping.fm, in where they post the exact same thing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and anywhere else they can. This strategy is not only ineffective, it’s lazy.
My solution for those just getting their feet wet, or drowning, in the social media pool is a simple, yet effective one:
Step One
Pick only one platform to initially focus your efforts. This may mean temporarily ditching the Twitter account. Or neglecting your Facebook page. Whatever you decide is the most effective medium for connecting with your desired audience, use it, and only it.
In most cases, if you concentrate on one network, you can become more active while spending less time maintaining the account and relationships.
Caveat: As a matter of online reputation management, I suggest signing-up for as many social network accounts as warranted. While you’re not active on all of them, you still want a presence on the networks.
Step Two
Once you have a grasp on your first network, you will want to have a stronger home base that you can control. This is where a website comes into play. And while I’m a big proponent for a blog, you can simply start with a landing page through WordPress with a short blurb and contact capture form. It doesn’t need to be the prettiest website, nor does it need to be overloaded with content. It just needs to be effective for conversions.
The beauty of WordPress is you’re able to easily add pages, content and eventually a blog.
Step Three
As time goes by, you will become relatively efficient at maintaining your sole social network and your growing website. Therefore, you can now branch out into the next most promising avenue. If you’ve been posting daily on Facebook, start to explore Twitter. But please keep in mind that each social network serves its own purpose. And you should rarely post the same thing on all your networks.
To Summarize
Marketers feel they need to be everywhere online in order to be effectively promoting their brand. This is simply not true. There are over 500 million people on Facebook and a few hundred million on Twitter. Not to mention the billions of searches on Google that could lead to your blog.
Any one of these routes leaves much opportunity to seize your slice of the market.
Put in other words, spread yourself too thin amongst all the social networks and you’ll become ineffective and overloaded. Conversely, by focusing on one or two avenues you’ll begin to see a great return on your efforts.
