Living online – how much is too much?

Finding yourself living online?

I have a tricky relationship with social media. Sometimes I feel excited about posting and interacting on a professional level but most of the time I find myself thinking I should get on Facebook or Hootsuite to stay active. Ick! I don’t like that word and I know better than to live by “shoulds” and I also know that social media and online marketing is a big part of growing any business and connecting to our tribe.

Filling up for me is about connecting to people in a way that gives service to what they need. Isn’t that why you are doing what yuo do? To fill a desire of yours of your clients? In an online world it is super important to reach more people outside our current customers such as past or potential ones and colleagues who are all looking for that connection, support and to increase their impact and wholeness.

You might, like me, be struggling to find the right balance of reaching out to a wider audience and be able to unplug, hang out with truly “live” people and spend more time active and outdoors.

Here are some tips to turn your social media approach into a fun and rewarding business development tactic that fills you up and your customers, without taking up all of your precious time to live:

• Have a strategy that outlines your message and the impact you want to make with your message. It will have more meaning and feel more purposeful to have a plan before sending out random bits of info to the world.
• On that note, keep your content focused and try not to cast your net too wide with topics. Laser target people to follow that write about things your audience will love too.
• Go for feelings as well as facts. One of my client’s mantra’s is “people won’t remember what you teach them, they’ll remember how you made them feel”.
• Mean what you say, say what you mean – wishy washy or watered down insights won’t catch anyone’s attention.
• Give, give and give some more. Whether it’s an article, post, tip or recommendation giving your best content is key).
• Post sparingly. Remember that less is more (according to Facebook’s Lead Strategist of Global Creative Solutions posting less often with greater engagement will rank your posts higher – 5x per week of FB will often suffice). If you can’t live without Twitter, be sure you use a program like Hootsuite to schedule your Tweets in bulk in advance.
• Be authentic. When you aren’t feeling the love, shut it down and go for a walk.

So if you’ve read all this and realize that you don’t have a strategic approach to marketing or social media, contact me and I can help you create one.

Got any other can’t live without tips for the social media novice or entrepreneur who wears all the hats? I’d love to hear them and other approaches here.