Some Keys for Being Active on Social Media

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

For years, I have worked at developing a large social media following—over 200,000 Twitter followers, over 18,000 LinkedIn Connections and over 4,900 Facebook friends. These types of numbers do not happen overnight but are something every author can do—with consistent work. I continue to expand and develop these areas.

In this article, I want to give you several keys for doing your own social media. Yes you can hire others to do social media. 

From my experience no matter how much you train them, they will not do it like you do it. Your passion needs to show through. I have always done my own social media posts.

1. Control Your Social Media Time. It's easy to waste hours on your Facebook feed or Twitter feed or LinkedIn feed. I do go over to these places but my time is controlled and not very long at any time.

2. Have the Mindset Your Social Stream Is Like a Magazine. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, you notice I have a great deal of variety on my social media streams. Yet everything is focused for people interested in publishing. My mindset when I put together my posts are like I am putting together a print magazine targeted to a particular audience. I will keep you on track with what you are putting out.

3. Work Ahead. I use the paid version of Hootsuite to post consistently throughout each day. The majority of my posts come from other people and each one has an image and a link to more resources, The only exception is the quotation and photo I use to begin each day. In general, once a week I fill out my plans for the entire week and it often takes me about 20 to 30 minutes for this task.

4. Create A Grid for Your Scheduled Posts. No one but me probably knows the pattern of my social media posts. I begin each day with a quotation and a photo of that person. I follow that with a couple of posts to my own material such as a free ebook or a product that I'm selling. These posts are followed by six hours of posts from others—yet to my target audience. I close the day with a couple of personal posts to a blog article or a free resource. You could create a formal grid (I haven't) but I recommend you make a pattern for yourself and then it is automatic and something you do rather than work to create.

A recent Pew Poll has proven that 80% of the tweets on Twitter come from 20% of the people. Because I tweet 12 to 15 times a day, I believe I'm in the 20%.  Here's an extra truth about social media: Not everyone reads every post but people are reading your posts. I can see from the comments and reactions.

These are some of my keys for being active on social media. What are your keys in this area? Let me know in the comments below.

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