I meet lots of business owners who want to use social media. To them it seems like the right thing to do. There’s lots of buzz and they are seeing good results by others. Now it’s their time to begin using social media.

Unfortunately some want to be set up and have their social media run automatically, all by itself. That’s a bad idea. Think about it, if you automated everything in your business, what would it look like. Imagine the phone system where no one really answers the phone except a robot. A company, that I know, did this. They managed to enrage a lot of their customers very quickly. Needless to say, they went back to a real person answering the phone.

Do we really expect something from nothing? It takes some work to get a return. Even on this membership site, I still need to input material to leverage the results. The idea that you sit back and watch the cash roll in without any input at all is not realistic.

I tell my clients that if they want to use social media, they need to be prepared to work social media for at least one hour of the day. I will share more specific details in the Silver Level Strategy Tip section for my members. The point I am trying to help you understand is this, if you are not prepared to work social media for one hour a day, you probably should not use it. You could appear pretty slack and uncaring when others connect with you and you don’t connect back. They might even think you run your business the same way.

So if you can’t put one hour in, then don’t use social media. Some businesses can appoint a social media coordinator to do this for the business. Small business owners usually do not have this option. I would further caution small business owners from using virtual assistants to make it look like they are doing the stuff. If people find out that someone else is doing your social media as you, you will be hung out to dry. Don’t fake it till you make it, be yourself till you make it. Virtual assistants have their place. It’s not pretending to be you.

Silver Level Strategy Tip

Here’s how you should be spending your social media time during the day:
[ismember]
[private_silver]

If you go one hour a day for your social media, you should break it up into four 15 minute sessions. Do 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes before or after lunch, do 15 minutes later in the afternoon and do 15 minutes after super time.

This will stretch out your social media presence. People go on at different times. This will allow to get noticed by more groups of people. And when you factor in the different time zones, this will help you connect with others on the other side of the continent or the other side of the world.

What ever strategy you employ, make sure you do not lump all your social media time together. You will only appear present at that time and will only be seen by those watching at that time. This will limit the number of followers you could connect with. Remember people are different. They have their own preferred times to do social media. You have to accommodate them, not yourself.

For today, go to www.klout.com and rest your mouse over the numbers beside the main klout score in red. Look at True Reach. This is the size of your engage audience. These are the ones that are paying attention to you and the ones that you are interacting with. You want to see this number increase.

In all of your four segments today, I want you to engage someone by saying “Hi, how are you?” Yes, it is that simple. If they reply back, answer them. Start doing this on a consistent basis.

[/private_silver]
[/ismember]