I’ve changed up how I’m using social media tools lately, and I thought I’d write it up, in case this proves useful to you. Your mileage will vary. This is just what’s working for me.
Listening
I’m still using RSS searches more than anything else for listening, seeing as most of my listening is just for personal projects at this point. If I were going to pay for a listening tool, my choices of late would be some mix of Radian6, Sysomos, and/or Trackur.
Blogging
I use WordPress for my home base for several reasons. One is that it’s robust. Two is that I like that I can use premium wordpress themes (affiliate link) with it, that give me all kinds of extra SEO and other features. I’m not giving up my blog for Tumblr, Google+ or any other real estate that’s not mine to build on, nor should you, unless you just want a transient place to write.
Outposts
I’ve pretty much abandoned Facebook. Yes, there are hundreds of millions of people on there. It’s just never given me much value back. I’m not interested in trudging through it. Yes, I’ve temporarily left a bit of a ghost town there, but I’ll go back and clean up once I’m really sure about the rest of it.
Twitter, I’ve just recently restructured to give me more of a “news” feeling than a “conversation” feeling. I’m following lists of business news reporters, lists of close friends who haven’t quite made the shift over to Google+ as their primary outpost, and friends who I want to track what they’re doing with Twitter that’s different than what they’re doing with other networks.
Google+ is my primary outpost at this point. I’m doing more work there than ever. Why? There are lots of reasons, but primarily, it’s because I’m getting much more engagement, much more activity, and a lot more back and forth with really interesting people.
WorkFlow
Here’s a rough sketch of one of the workflows that I’m using these days:
- Use listening tools to determine how else to be helpful.
- Create blog post (with or without video).
- Promote via Twitter (2x).
- Promote via Google Plus (1x).
- Respond to comments via Google Voice.
- Respond to comments on blog post.
- Track any calls to action I might have seeded the post with.
- Comment on other people’s blog posts, and/or Google+ posts.
- Share and Curate in Google+
When I’m spending time on social media platforms these days, that’s what I’m doing.
Curious to Know About YOUR Workflows and Any Changes
What have you done differently these days? How have your workflows changed? What are you adding or removing?