Showing posts with label time management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time management. Show all posts

Monday, April 1, 2013

A Checklist of Tools

Happy Monday, good people of the blogosphere! Wow, what a weekend, eh? Well, on to another week at the fantabulous Jo Michaels blog. You know you love me. If you didn't, you wouldn't be here, reading this post!

What's that? This is your first visit? Oh my... You should take a moment and give yourself a little tour. Check out the link list on the sidebar, grab your free branding PDF, and browse through some of the awesomeness that's found around here. Then, subscribe via e-mail so you don't miss anything new.

I know it's April Fool's Day, but you won't find shenanigans here. Sorry if I disappointed you.

Today's post is a compliment (call it a checklist, if you will) to my Social Networking Schedule. It's a handy little thing you can flash down to be sure you have all the things you need in your virtual tool belt.

Apps:
  • Evernote (handy for syncing information across ALL devices)
  • Flipboard
  • Hootsuite (or Buffer)
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Goodreads
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Google+
  • Facebook Pages Manager
  • Blogger (this got an update and works beautifully)
  • StumbleUpon
  • Tumblr
Social media you should be a part of:
  • StumbleUpon
  • Quora
  • Squidoo
  • YouTube
  • Pinterest
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • A blogging platform (Blogger, Tumblr, or WordPress)
  • LinkedIn
  • Google+
  • Goodreads
Tools you should be using to streamline your workflow and up your visibility:
  • Hootsuite (or Buffer)
  • Flipboard
  • Some kind of schedule, posted where you can see it every day
If you don't have a tablet, you might think about getting one. It will help you on your quest to becoming a force to be reckoned with online. I don't know what I'd do without my iPad. Seriously.

What's the point in taking the time to set up all these social networks?

The more places you are, the more places you can be found. Easy to explain.

How many of these networks are you on?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Monday, March 25, 2013

Proven Results Social Networking Schedule

Happy Monday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I'm happy to share with you my results from using my Social Networking Schedule I posted two weeks ago. I used it last week, and here are some of my stats:

I enjoyed several retweets over the weekend and a number of downloads of my free PDF on cleaning up your image.


I gained five new fans and enjoyed two shares of my posts on Facebook.

Stumbleupon sent me eight new visitors to the blog.

I gained two new followers over on Tumblr.

I sold three books.

I got mentioned twice on Google+.

I now have two featured lenses over on Squidoo. http://www.squidoo.com/book-formatting2 and http://www.squidoo.com/things-i-learned-from-my-editor

I answered a question on Quora.

No video last week; but I intend to do one this week, as scheduled.

Ms. Rebecca Fyfe, over at the ChaBooCha, asked me to write a guest post for her. Integrating the Social Networking Schedule has never been easier! Go check out the post here.

Now that's a lot of activity. How many more people do you think I got my voice heard by? Becoming recognized in your field is easy if you schedule your time and use it to maximize efficiency.

If you missed my Saturday post, it was a blog tour stop for Good Ghost Gone Bad. I'm giving away two e-copies of that book. Go check it out and enter!

Remember, branding is important and so is social media. So, get on it!

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Friday, March 15, 2013

Social Networking Schedule - Day Fifteen WABC

Happy Friday, good people of the blogosphere! Today is the last day of the Winter Author Blog Challenge. I bet you've noticed the influx of discussion on social networking sites, eh? Over the last fourteen days, we've discussed Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Google+, Quora, FourSquare, GoodReads, Squidoo, StumbleUpon (amongst other social bookmarking websites), and Ning. It's been one hell of a couple of weeks! In the last few days, I saw people becoming overwhelmed by all the websites concerning social media. There were a couple I hadn't heard of, but I had a profile on most of them because I know social media works. Our prompt for today is:

What was your biggest takeaway from participating in the Winter Author Blog Challenge? What is your plan/strategy for integrating your social media platforms? What would you recommend to a new author who’s just getting started on social media?


First, I'll answer the questions. Then, I'm going to break down all this social media talk and give you some tools to help you manage your time when dealing with them so you don't have all the hours in your day sucked out by trying to be everywhere at once. Sound good? Okay, let's get going!

My biggest takeaway, as always with a blog challenge, is meeting new people and interacting on other blogs. It forces me to get out there and read and comment other blogger's posts.

I already had a social media strategy when I began, but I realized I'm not using it to its full advantage. From now on, I'll be following a much stricter schedule. One I'm going to share with you in a moment. If you're new to social media, I have one tip for you: Brand yourself across all your platforms. Whether with a logo, your face, or a cute picture of a bug, you need to have consistency. People who happen upon something belonging to you should know right away it's yours. A color scheme is a must, as is a consistent name. If you don't have an identity package, call a graphic artist today and get one. You won't regret it.

You should have a folder containing: Logo, icon, or headshot, preferred background design, html color scheme codes, and a bio. Label it Branding and never ever delete it.

If you don't have naming consistency across all your platforms, change them. This is KEY.

Now, on to the tools! We all know I love free. So everything I give you will have a free option. A couple of them allow you to pay if you want more functionality but it's not necessary.

First and foremost: Buffer and Hootsuite
I'm a huge fan of Buffer. I can go to a site, hit the buffer icon in Firefox, and schedule it to Tweet, post to Facebook, and pop a message on my LinkedIn wall with one click. It's awesome. Since I'm a free user, I get up to ten buffered posts. Best of all, I can control when they're posted. I can manage all three of those social networks for two to three days at a time by scheduling my posts to span.
Hootsuite is a little different an incorporates up to five social networks. I'm not sure if they have a Firefox plugin like Buffer, but here's a list of stuff they can help you manage:
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • FourSquare
  • WordPress
  • MySpace
  • mixi
Now, you can also incorporate free apps into your Hootsuite. Just remember, you get up to five with the free plan, more will cost you money. Here's a list of their free apps:
  • Tumblr
  • Instagram
  • Flickr
  • Trendspottr
  • Evernote
  • MailChimp
  • Constant Contact
  • SocialBro
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Storify
  • Vimeo
  • Scoop.it
  • SlideShare
  • Blogger
On a hunch, I did a search through the app store. Guess what? There's an app for that, too! Both Buffer and Hootsuite have an app you can download. If you haven't signed up with one of these management tools, please do so right now. It will help more than I can put into words.

Why is this important? Because it lets you manage all your social networking from one application. Imagine spending just one hour a day managing everything! Of course, visiting the app isn't really all you have to do. But it'll still only take an hour a day. Without further ado, here's a handy dandy schedule. If you follow it, you'll be on your way to social media ownership very soon!

Monday - 20-30 minutes for a blog post. You should have something integrated so your posts are automatically sent to your social networks when you click publish. I have the buffer button and all I have to do is click it after I post. 20 minutes to schedule posts across all media for the next two days. 10 minutes browsing Twitter and re-tweeting things you find interesting.

Tuesday - 20-30 minutes for a blog post. 10 minutes to answer a single question over on Quora. 10 minutes to share interesting things others post on Facebook. 10 minutes to visit and update your GoodReads page. Make sure you're clicking like on any reviews you've gotten.

Wednesday - 20-30 minutes for a blog post. 20 minutes to schedule posts across all media for the next two days and make sure it's all running smoothly. 10 minutes to record a video you'll use later.

Thursday - 10 minutes to upload video to YouTube. 20-30 minutes for a blog post incorporating said video. 15 minutes to create a Squidoo lens (can be about and incorporate your video as well!). 5 minutes to pin a couple of things over on Pinterest.

Friday - 20-30 minutes for a blog post. 30 minutes scheduling everything to update until Monday and coming up with blog post ideas for the next week and make sure everything is running smoothly.

Saturday - 20 minutes sharing on Facebook. 20 minutes re-tweeting on Twitter. 20 minutes to visit other blogs and pop in a comment or two.

Sunday - 30 minutes sharing on Facebook, 30 minutes re-tweeting on Twitter.

Now, lather, rinse, repeat. I added Saturday and Sunday because most people don't work on the weekends, but are on Facebook and Twitter just hanging out. Why not share a couple of things while you're at it? After all, social media is about being social, right? So many people shied away from FourSquare and Ning, I didn't include them.

Granted, it's going to take you an hour or so to get one of the above apps working in the first place. Once you do, you'll wonder how you ever got on without it. They're time savers! Use them! They're FREE!

Does this help you break it down? Does it all seem more manageable and do-able now?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo