So What Comes Next

You have your blog started and an account on FaceBook. Your Twitter is set up and your picture has put the final touch on your Linkedin profile. You are ready to go, to start your Social Media Marketing effort. So now what the hell do you do? Perhaps a more daunting task even then setting up your Social Media Marketing platforms, is figuring out what to do with them when they are set to go.

Step by step, here is what you should do:


1) You are going to need content for your blog. Your blog content needs to be informative, well written and brief enough to be wholly consumed in the short time that most blog posts get from their readers. I will have more on guidelines for the forms of blog posting later, but for now, aim for about 350 to 400 words. You should post a minimum of two blogs per week. More is better, but don't burn yourself out too quickly.

2)  Once your blog is posted, Tweet about it.  Tell all your followers in 140 characters or less about the great information you have put out on your blog. The purpose of the exercise, remember, is to funnel traffic to your blog.  Always Tweet with your blogs, but find other times to Tweet as well. A great tool to manage your Tweets is TweetDeck.

3) Post information about your blog to your Linkedin account. Linkedin is a bit of a stuffy place, so choose carefully which blog posts to tell your Linkedin followers about and what form you let that information take.

4) Facebook, perhaps that should be in all CAPS. Facebook has 500 Million users. Let them know as well about your blog post. Put a summary of your blog post up on your Facebook account. The summary can be up to 400 characters long, but keep it shorter. Tease your reader here and entice them to click through to your full blog post. Remember to have a link to your blog visible and easy to click.

5) Any photos or video that you have that help tell your story should be freely used along the way.  You may have to open a YouTube account to help with the video, but the extra effort is so very worthwhile. Statistics show clearly that visuals and particularly video, command attention.

6) You must be Retweeting. Retweeting is an art form and as such, gets a whole blog posts to itself