Twitter --> In the morning I go thru Digg and my gReader blogs I follow and re-tweet articles I find of interest. Throughout the day I will have TweetDeck running in the background and will occassionally tweet out something. I treat the twitter stream like having a radio on in the background.

Blog --> I try to write at least 1 article a week (whereas I tweet probably 5 or 6 times a day).

LinkedIn --> Whenever I can get around to it, I try to answer some questions in the "Answer Questions" section; but, I don't tie myself to a schedule here.

Tools --> For tweeting: TweetDeck, Seesmic. For blogging: Wordpress.

And ... I have the corresponding apps running on my iPhone as well as my PC.

posted March 28, 2010

This is one of the most asked questions these days! I recommend that the least one does is an hour a week. I suggest Sundays. BTW, what day am I answering your question? Social Media is different than answering email. With email, it's the traditional one to one form of communication. With Social Media you are involved in a one to one and one to many conversation. Even though I'm answering you, I'm aware that my answer might be read by people who I would love to connect with.

So, the minimum time I recommend is one hour a week. But, once you start to have some success with Social Media it's easy to justify adding an hour or two a week to your schedule. I went from doing one blog post a week to two a week. That helps search engine optimization and it makes one's blog more interesting for people to follow it.

The nice thing about LinkedIn is that when you answer questions all of your connections are told about it in the weekly email. So, LinkedIn can be very helpful. I love seeing the names of the people I've advised to participate more in LinkedIn.

One also wants to be using one's time efficiently. So, I'm going to use this question and my answer as my blog post for this evening! I will link back to you, Susanne, because I would love to help you get to be more famous as well.

Links:

• http://placemakinggroup.com/Dennis_Desk/

posted March 28, 2010

Ron gave a great description of a good strategy. I'm probably spending about an hour a day on social media, but this goes up and down.

It is easy to get overwhelmed. I've developed a sort of mental prioritization list for the places I have a presence, and when things get really busy, the platforms near the bottom of the list don't get updates as often. (This accounts for my sporadic presence on LinkedIn, but don't tell them that!)

posted March 28, 2010

Susanne:
There is no generic answer or one answer fits all to this question
It really depends on how and who is using the SM and for what purpose
SMM is a part of the overall plan of marketing and branding of any company that uses it
The time spent on each media channel is totall correlated to the results that one wants or looking to achieve
SM has to have a strategy that is built around the mission and goals of a business it is not just joining Twitter or answering questions on LI or having a fanpage on FB because everyone else is doing it
The main point here is to know WHY I am using LI or FB or Twitter or blogs or any combination or none at all but use some other SM networks
It all depends who you want to reach and where are they located online
LI is more B2B, FB is great for non profit, associations, events, restaurants etc..., Twitter is still in between
Are you looking to make an impact locally so you need to concentrate on more geo sites or nationally you use other channels, like bookmarking, news aggregators, communities
Each SM marketing plan is unique to each business and there is nothing called a Social Media Expert there are SM strategists or consultants in certain niches of SM as it is a vast field like you specialize in Emal Marketing which part is considered web2.0 based on an opt-in list
The time spent varies as per need and as the strategy there are applications that can help you save time like Ping.fm, friendfeed, RSS, tweetdeck, social oomph etc...
You alwyas need to measure your results and keep tweeking what you are doing by monitoring your results to adjust channels, time spent ....
Hope this helps

posted March 29, 2010

I have this amazing tool that I use. It's called a brain and it's totally customizable. I'm able to track all my tools and my contacts with it and it runs on caffeine! :-)

I'm only joking a little though - no tool will ever replace authentic, real, relevant content and an honest approach to talking with people.

Cheers,

Erica Friedman
Yurikon LLC
Social Media Without Delusion
http://socialoptimized.blogspot.com
http://www.visualcv.com/elfriedman

posted March 29, 2010

The crux of this is surely that email started off as communicating and conducting 'online' conversations - whether 1:1 or 1:m. We then started using it as an outreach tool - communicating 'blindly' with people to drive lead and revenue generation activities. So suddenly we were in touch with a broader, unknown audience.
With the advent of social media we took this step into the unknown a stage further - people could converse with us, and more importantly about us, without any previous known contact. So the monitoring isn't just about what has come directly to us, or following up on what has come directly from us, but in looking at what is being said about us, who is saying it, and what actions we need to take. And this power of social media in that we can now see so many things that are relevant to us, of interest to us, and absolutely about us, is what tends to lead to the additional management overheads. It's no longer just about checking an inbox, it's about checking virtual boxes that yesterday you may not even have known existed and not fitting neatly into in, out categories!
And of course I'm using us deliberately ambiguously to refer to our personal and work-related topics of interest.
The tools required have to enable us to categorise and prioritise into my loosely-defined topics like this:
Things I'm generating/in control/leading" (my own conversations/contacts/communications)
Things I'm encouraging a conversation about, but can't direct further" (outbound campaigns, PR, what I think of as early-stage social media)
Things I want to take part in conversationally (where I see that some thought leadership will enhance reputation of myself, my company, my products)
Things I need to know about to improve my own positioning (competitive conversations, the markets I'm in, my personal interest areas)
Things I need to respond to immediately, that are currently not involving me (eg negative reviews)

There are probably more in the list, but trying to organise to some extent helps prioritise how you interact with your different social media platforms. However, if we go too structured, we rather defeat the object of the lovely loose connections that social media has negendered.

posted March 30, 2010

I like the way that Ron formatted his response, so I hope that he won't mind if I borrow from and adapt it.

RSS: Each morning, I use an RSS Reader to identify articles to be shared through Google Reader/Buzz.

Twitter: The best of the articles selected above (typically the ones that I think are most relevant to my social media job search) are tweeted through the course of the day; I try not to flood my Twitter stream in too much of a concentrated burst.

LinkedIn: I pull the RSS feeds for the LinkedIn Answers sections of interest/relevance for me into FeedDemon/Google Reader. This allows me to quickly peruse them without the hassle of going to LinkedIn.com, where it's much slower to review and answer questions. In fact, as I write this, I am inside a FeedDemon window. I try to do this two or three times a week. I also use the LinkedIn Network Updates RSS feed to monitor my updates; MUCH easier than using the web site.

Blog: I attempt to write three or four articles a week on social media and pop culture topics.


Tools -

For RSS: As part of my ongoing job search and technology research process, I created a Google Reader Listening Station to track topics of interest (a slide deck on the process available at http://www.slideshare.net/davidswinney/monitoring-your-personal-brand-using-google-reader) to supplement my existing RSS blog feeds. I use either FeedDemon or Google Reader (they sync with each other), depending upon whether I'm on my own computer or somewhere else.

For tweeting: HootSuite. I used to use TweetDeck all the time, but I find myself increasingly using HootSuite because of its more flexible interface (you can create multiple pages instead of a never-ending phalanx of columns) and ability to display conversations. I keep it running through the day and tweet occasionally, but the primary output is early in the day.

For blogging: Posterous, because it is so easy and flexible. However, I've recently become more concerned about the SEO of my blog, so I'm about to transition it over to WordPress.


Like Ron, I have all the corresponding applications on my iPhone.


David Swinney
http://davidswinney.posterous.com/

posted March 31, 2010

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posted March 31, 2010