How to Spring Clean Your Social Media in 5 Easy Steps

Spring is right around the corner. I know for some of you it still feels months away based on the weather. I spent my weekend spring cleaning my desk and work area. It felt good to purge and organize, and good timing since taxes are right around the corner. 

As you say good bye to winter and prepare for brighter, warmer temps ahead, it's time to "spring clean" your social media. Check out these 5 easy social media maintenance tips. 

1. Update your social media profiles. Have you switched jobs? Just launched a new website? Make sure your profile information is correct and up-to-date. For more tips on how to jazz up your LinkedIn profile, check out Victoria Ipri's LinkedIn for the Clueless. 

2. Delete old social media and discussion forum accounts. Get rid of accounts that you never use. You don't have to participate in everything out there. If you are pressed for time, stick to the top three:  LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

3. Evaluate your LinkedIn groups and your participation. If you aren't active in all groups, consider opting out of them and stick with your most active groups. 

4. Add social media time to your daily calendar. If you have slacked off on on your blog and social media updates over the winter months, schedule time in your calendar for your social media marketing. Even if you only have 10 minutes to spare per day, it's better than not doing anything with your social media. Kick off spring on the right foot by making a commitment to your social media marketing. 

5. Evaluate your social media analytics and look at your ROI and traffic. Is Twitter a dud and you havent't a retweet in months? Maybe Twitter isn't the right platform for your company. Do you receive positive feedback on LinkedIn and more people read your business blog as a result? Think about putting more effort into the social media channels that bring you higher traffic and conversion rates.  Check out this handy list of social media monitoring tools. 

Along with cleaning out your desk and packing away the winter sweaters, remember to dust off your social media - and dive into a fresh, clean approach to your social media in the upcoming months. 

250 Million Members Later: Social Media Shows Big Picture for 2010

This past weekend I overhead a woman discuss with her friend how “ridiculous” Facebook was and how she would never use it in a million years. I just smiled to myself as I tapped away on my Blackberry, and thought about how many times I’ve heard similar comments from social media “non-believers."

It made me think about how this woman’s “never in a million years” attitude towards social media hinders people - especially business professionals - from achieving success. Social media quickly engages and connects people on a global scale, and markets your company’s brands in innovative and cost-effective ways.

Her comment made me wonder why people still fight the “social networking system” – an online networking system that is clearly working.  People who choose to bury their head in the sand, that’s their prerogative but statistics don’t lie - especially when staring you right between the cyber eye. You can’t dispute what happened with the big social media players this year:

• Look at Facebook’s history: In December 2004, there were one million active Facebook users.  In 2006, Facebook members jumped to 12 million. In the beginning of 2010, Facebook had 250 million users. In just five years, Facebook users grew 250 percent. Not too shabby, Mark Zuckerberg.

• The number of Twitter users increase by 300,000 people per day. Twitter gets more than 3 billion requests each day, generated by over 180 million unique visitors. Twitter users send more than 55 million tweets per day (640 tweets per second).

• Twitter has donated access to tweets to the Library of Congress for research and preservation. So if you market your business via Twitter, your tweets are literally a part of history in the making!

• 85 million LinkedIn members represent 200 countries and every continent. Executives from all Fortune500 companies are LinkedIn members. – that is a LOT of global professionals interacting with each other on a daily basis.

For the woman who touted Facebook as “ridiculous,” I suggest that she join social media-savvy Planet Earth.  Maybe if you spend 24,7 on your Facebook, that might be a bit ridiculous but there is nothing ridiculous about social media and where it’s headed in 2011.

 

 

 

 

Twiffienciency Not So Twifficient - Bordering Spammy!

Have you heard about Twifficiency?

Yes, another new Twitter app that calculates your Tweety-ness, or in this case your "Twifficiency."

Since it launched last week, Twitter streams have been bombarded with tweeters' rates. It has been touted as a "rogue" application and has received criticism - that even techno savvy users can be tricked into spamming (it blasts out everyone's score via tweets). It helps to read the fine print.

It turns out it was a young emo-esque lad from Scotland didn't think his app would take off and be this popular - let alone turn into a Spam Fest on Twitter. Even Google execs failed the Twiffiency exam - read the full scoop here.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/17/twifficiency/