The Entrepreneurs Social Media Workout 1: Back to Basics

Posted on 28. Feb, 2010 by Natalie in Entrepreneurs, Featured, Marketing & Sales, Social Media

It’s almost the 1st of March and what better time to start a new routine.

I’m going to take you on a Social Media workout plan to grow your business, connect with more people, listen to new audiences, increase your visibility and attract more customers within a month.

Source: Vi.sualize.us

I’ll start by laying the foundations and then we’ll work on building up your strength and skills progressively until you’re a lean mean social media machine!

I’ll keep it entertaining and manageable and at the end of the month I’ll provide you with a handy compilation guide of these workouts so you can refer to it regularly.

What exactly is Social Media?

It’s a phenomenon experiencing incredible growth and for that very reason alone you need to have a social media presence and strategy.

According to Wikipedia:
“Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.”

According to Natalie Sisson:
“Social Media is media with a social component that provides a two-way street for communicating.”

Here are examples of Social Media sites:

• Social Bookmarking. (Del.icio.us, Blinklist, Simpy) Interact by tagging websites and searching through websites bookmarked by other people.
• Social News. (Digg, Propeller, Reddit) Interact by voting for articles and commenting on them.
• Social Networking. (Facebook, Twitter, Last.FM) Interact by adding friends, commenting on profiles, joining groups and having discussions.
• Social Photo and Video Sharing. (YouTube, Flickr) Interact by sharing photos or videos and commenting on user submissions.
• Wikis. (Wikipedia, Wikia) Interact by adding articles and editing existing articles.

Basically any website that invites you to interact with the site and with other visitors falls into the definition of social media. Let’s get started

Exercise 1: Laying the Foundations

Sure, you’ve hung out on Facebook®. Followed some folks on Twitter®. Made a bunch of connections on LinkedIn®. But now it’s time to make these networks work harder for you. These are the three most powerful social networks to be on both personally and professionally, so at the very least you should have set up a profile on them.

What you need for your profile:

1. Got a photo? Make sure people know you’re not a faceless business. Use this on every profile.
2. Make sure your profile represents your personal brand. If you haven’t already, create your personal paragraph that sums up who you are and why you’re awesome.
3. Include as much as you’re comfortable sharing about yourself. The more you add, the better these tools can help you connect. But remember there are some things colleagues and clients don’t need to know.
4. Include searchable keywords, but don’t get spammy. Think about words that you’re customers would use to search for you and your business and add 5-6 of these.
5. Keep it current. Update your profiles regularly. Set up a system to store your login information to refer to easily, plus bookmark each site on your browser (Firefox or Google Chrome are the best).

Exercise 2: Strengthen your core.

Kick off your new social media regimen by developing new habits and cleaning up your memberships:

• Make sure your Facebook®, LinkedIn® and Twitter® profiles are up to date. If you don’t have one then set one up today.
• Create a Google® public profile. This will give you access to alerts and rich information down the road. And your Google profile makes it easy for the public to search and find you. If you don’t already have one, start by opening a Google account.
• If you haven’t already set up a Google Alert for your name and your business at a minimum so you know where you’re being mentioned and featured on the web.
• Use the same name on each site to make yourself easier to find. For example I use NatalieSisson and WomanzWorld.

Put aside 30 minutes for each exercise this week and you’ll already be feeling great.

The next workout on Tuesday will focus on how to use Facebook for your business.

• 8 Steps To Becoming a Savvy Social Media Entrepreneur
• Five steps to taking your networking online (and into the social media age)

Tags: Creating Business Profiles, Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Bookmarking Sites, Social Media Workout for Entrepreneurs, Twitter