Blogging. Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. YouTube. LinkedIn. . . .

With the internet you have, AT YOUR FINGERTIPS, the possibility of reaching hundreds, thousands, MILLIONS of people with your message. Isn’t that amazing?

Below are 7 Social Media tips based on my experience on social media since 2007:

1. Don’t start a blog, Facebook Page, or Twitter account until you are ready to engage and keep “feeding the beast.”

If people notice that you aren’t making updates, they often unfollow. Having a Facebook or Twitter icon on your website is pointless if those social networks are being neglected. What does that say about your business?

2. Be personal.

People like the idea that they are actually reaching and talking to someone . . . to YOU. Respond to as many questions and comments as possible. This can be time consuming and it is something I personally continue to personally work on.  🙂

3. Be selective with where your information is going. 

If things seem too automated, your message loses sincerity.  Services like Hootsuite (which I use) make it easy to blast out information to different social networks.  Hootsuite is great because you can choose which social network you want to post to. For example, if I want to share a link to my latest blog post, I can choose to share it across all my social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) because I’d like to expose it to as many people as possible. But if I’m having a personal conversation via Twitter, posting that to Facebook is useless and creates noise. What is someone going to think when they see something like “@leslielejandro Definitely.  Let’s do it!” on Facebook? They have no idea what you are talking about, let alone what the “@” might mean.

4. Reduce noise. 

When making a post (anything from blogging, to posting a photo, to a Twitter update), make sure it’s your BEST and not just passable because you want to put something out there. Put out information with intention. All of it is part of your brand and it matters…a lot.

5. Pay attention to when you have the most readers.

This way you can post with optimal timing.  I seem to get the most readers on Monday and Tuesday morning.  Fridays are slow, and I don’t ever blog on Saturday or Sunday.  It is different for everyone. For a website or blog, you can use a free service like Google Analytics to track your readership.

6. Quality, not quantity.

“I want 100,000 followers.”  Follower count is meaningless unless a good chunk of those 100,000 people are engaging and talking about your business. People can follow or unfollow you with one click of a button.  The more important question is: Are they actually engaging in your material?  Do they read it, comment on it, re-post it, and share it with their friends?  Those are the kind of followers you want, and 10 kinds of those followers is infinitely better than 100,000 followers who don’t even read what you put out there.

7. Last but not least, be polished!

Now a days, the internet is your first impression as a person, as a business. Polished grammar and the way you speak is of utmost importance.  TyPinG LiKe ThiS, sppeling tings wroong, having bad grammar, or forgetting punctuation looks unprofessional (my mother drilled this into my head since I came out of the womb). Take the time to double check everything and minimize mistakes.

I hope this might help some of you!