A Daily Plan For Social Media Growth

When I first starting using social media I wanted someone to give me a checklist, something I could complete every morning and not have to think about the rest of the day. I like routine and when I have a daily regiment I find I make daily progress. But after searching online for some time, I never found a social media daily plan or checklist from the experts. So I came up with my own checklist, and in the following article I take you through it step-by-step.

It may not be the best plan, or best plan for you, but it’s a starting point. Many business owners and online marketers use social media because that’s what you’re supposed to do these days, and lack a real plan they can stick to day-in, day-out to reach their goals.

This article is designed to give you a plan, one you can execute every day to reach your goals, even if you have a busy schedule.

It’s a flexible daily plan that you can (and should) tweak to meet your own business needs and goals, and is intended to be one part of your overall social media strategy. I hope you find it useful.

A Daily Plan For Social Media Growth http://t.co/gpE5MaYlmi @techiediy One of the greatest posts I have come across.

— Lance Wyllie (@LanceWyllie) August 22, 2013

Contents

1. Introduction and Goals


2. Going Big


3. The Plan


4. Phase I


5. Seeding Your Accounts


6. Groups, Pages and Automation


7. Phase II


8. Weekly Tasks


9. Tools


10. Phase III

YOUR GOALS

Without goals, you won’t be able to measure success and know if what you’re doing is worth the effort. You may not know why you are performing certain activities and become inconsistent. The following are a few basic examples, but you could certainly come up with many others:

• Networking, growing personal networks


• Serve customers and gather feedback


• Establish yourself as an expert or thought-leader in your niche


• Capture leads


• Drive traffic to your website, products

The daily plan detailed in this article is focused on growing your social networks, so that your social media accounts serve as a platform to reach any of the example goals, or those goals that have yet to be inspired. The larger your network, the easier it will be to network, get traffic, leads, and establish yourself as an expert.

For the remainder of this post, the main objective will be to grow your networks as quickly as possible with the least amount of effort, so that at any time you may pivot to any campaign or new goal that develops.

YOUR MODELS

I recommend having a second objective that will help you tweak your social media plan. Identify someone, a person or company, who is successful in your niche and is currently at a level in their business that you want to reach. If possible find more than one. These will serve as models to emulate.

Study your models. Determine how big their social networks are. Using tools like Quantcast and Alexa you can gauge how much traffic they are driving to their sites. Take note at what they are posting and see what gets the most Likes, Retweets and Google +1’s.

With some deep research, you may even be able to estimate how much money they’re earning online. Use this information to come up with targets for you to reach.
Your second objective should be to reach your target in X number of months. As your social media plan is in motion, you can adjust your activities as needed to meet the goal.

Next we go BIG...

HOW BIG?

Your first milestone in your social media journey should be to reach the level of someone who is already having success in your niche. However, your work doesn't have to end there. It’s the philosophy of this author that bigger is better when it comes to your own social networks.

You may hear a very different type of advice from the social media “gurus," who preach building quality networks by screening friends and followers. In my experience, the amount time it takes to “qualify” people I allow in my network does not justify the payoff. That’s just me.

There are many advantages to having social networking accounts with large followings. People (and advertisers) are attracted to big numbers. Even with so-called “low quality” networks (if there is such a thing), with large networks you’ll have more traffic, more joint-venture opportunities, and you’ll find it takes less effort to grow your followers and fans. Your networks will become real assets you can leverage.

The truth is that there is no right answer here, and until you find the answer for yourself, just grow. As you grow and measure your success, your goals will become clear and your strategy will become refined.

THE BIG FOUR

In our social media daily plan, we’re going to focus on the big four social-networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

There are two more sites you should have a presence on and use for traffic: YouTube and Pinterest.

YouTube is an extremely powerful tool for connecting with your audience and driving traffic. It’s not a part of our daily plan because it takes time to produce quality video content. However, I suggest you create video content and include a video marketing strategy as part of your overall social media plan.

I mention Pinterest because the site can deliver lots of traffic depending on your niche. It’s worth testing with your visual content to see if it can help meet your traffic and business goals.

THE BIG PICTURE

As mentioned earlier, the daily action plan is meant to be a portion of your overall social media strategy. The plan includes activities that will easily fit your schedule every day. I recommend allocating a few hours a week or more in addition to the daily plan for maximum results. It’s important to have consistent time each week to create content, perform research, measure results and other tasks.

Now, onto the Plan...

THE PLAN

The goal of this social media daily plan is to give you a set of activities that can realistically be performed every day to grow your following on the big four social networks.

These activities can be done in about 20 minutes a day on average. Some days they may take longer, perhaps 30 minutes, and on other days you might get through them in only 15 minutes.

It’s up to you if you want to complete tasks in the plan every day of the week, or Monday through Friday. I recommend at least committing to Monday through Friday, but for the fastest results, more is better.

No matter how busy you are, you should have 20 minutes in your day to zip through these tasks.

Think you don’t have 20 minutes? Time how long you spend reading emails in the morning. I was shocked to find that I was spending about 45 minutes every morning! And when looking closely at my inbox, I found that 70% to 80% of messages were unimportant. Most were offers, news, a few jokes, things that didn’t really necessitate my immediate attention. Since that analysis, I’ve changed my daily email habits. If you’re in the same boat, see if cutting the time in half in the morning gives you and extra 20 minutes.

There are also recommended weekly tasks that you may perform on one of your “off” days, or you may replace one of the days in your daily schedule. I recommend the former.

I encourage you to go beyond this plan, the more you do, the faster you’ll grow. Use this plan as a base minimum in your overall strategy. In other words, if your strategy is to do one hour of social media activities per day, there will be some days your schedule may not allow you to spend an hour, on these days you can fall back on this plan.

The Plan has two phases and an optional third phase:

Phase 1: Preparation and set up. During this phase, you’ll some light research and set up your social networking accounts, or clean up your existing accounts in preparation for the next phase. You will also “seed” your accounts with some base followers. We’ll also throw some automation tricks into the mix to maximize your time for other tasks.

Phase 2: Execution. After the set up phase, you’re ready to put the daily plan into action.

Phase 3 (optional): Maintenance. When you have reached your goals for growth, you may want to reduce your phase two activities and enter a maintenance mode that is less intense and allows time for new tasks. This phase is optional; you may continue with phase two activities as long as you like.

CONTENT

Based on models you’ve identified in your marketplace, you should have an idea of what type of posts gets the most Likes, Retweets and Google +1’s in your marketplace.

A mistake you may see others make is direct selling on most or all social media updates. While that strategy can work, it destroys your credibility and reputation. This strategy is usually used by people who don’t care about reputation and create lots of fake personas to make it work.

Social media is all about building relationships, not business transactions. People just don’t like to be sold to. Any attempt to sell directly on social media may harm your online presence. In a live situation, a customer would think of excuses and come up with a polite “no” to a sales pitch. But on social media it’s all too easy for customers to turn you off, all they have to do is to click the “unfollow” button, and you’re gone.

I like this example my friend came up with. Social media is much like dating. If a guy walks into a bar with the intention leaving with a new committed relationship, he’s going to walk out empty-handed. In dating, since the two parties don’t know each other very well, there’s a series of progressive steps that builds rapport before there’s any talk of commitment.

It’s the same in social media and sales in general. You need to woo and nurture and to gain respect. Keep this in mind as you decide on what to share with your network.

Be helpful and add value to your followers. Don’t share links only from your website. If you are an expert in your niche, then you probably pay close attention to industry news. Share new and helpful information you discover from other sites.

Humor is also very effective. These tasks don't always have to be serious, and you can have a lot of fun with your ‘work’ if you like. In every industry, every market, no matter what it is, there is a humorous side or a joke to be made. Even posting a funny picture that has nothing to do with your niche can go a long way to help you grow your following!

Sourcing Content

When it’s time to for my daily tasks I already have lots of great stuff lined up and ready to share. It’s all in my inbox. Subscribe to sites that have great content and let the news come to you. Set up Google Alerts on your target niche keywords and have them send to your email or your RSS reader.

Note: In the Automation section of this chapter, you’ll learn that you can automate some of this type of sharing to maximize your time for other tasks. However, it’s a good idea to monitor the news for things you can comment on in your sharing.

Share everything you touch. Not just your articles and videos, often your comments on one social site can be shared on other sites. When you update your LinkedIn status, share it on Twitter. When you leave a comment on a blog or on a YouTube video, share the article or video on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter. Wherever you leave your mark, share, share, share!

TIP: Use the free Twylah ‘Power Tweet’ to share any place you visit online to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and others. To get the Power Tweet button, first sign up for Twylah (free), then search for the Power Tweet bookmarklet instructions.

Indirect Updates

Indirect updates can help build engagement but more importantly can help you get lots of Likes and +1’s. Indirect updates are posts that don’t necessary have anything to do with your niche. They can be humorous images, jokes, inspirational quotes. These get shared like crazy on Facebook and Google+ you should include it in your strategy.

Be on the lookout as you browse through the web or when people share interesting and humorous images or articles. If you see something funny, intriguing shocking, make a note to use it for your daily tasks. Look for content to share on Imgur and Reddit, these sites have an endless supply of hilarious pictures and stories.

Next: Phase I

PHASE 1: PREPERATION AND SET UP

RESEARCH

Phase 1 starts by identifying people you want to model and emulate in your niche. Take notes on topics and posts your models are sharing that are getting the most votes (Likes, Retweets, +1s) on each of the social networks.

Take a close look at tags they are using. These may be good keywords you’ll want to use in on your social account. See if the keywords in tags are being used in post titles and on their profiles. Take note of keywords that appear repeatedly, you may want to use these later in your own profile and posts.

To get the most from you keywords, you can run keywords you’ve discovered through the Google’s keyword tool: https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool. This tool will give you some sense of traffic volume these keywords receive. If they are getting lots of traffic, keep them. Ones that are not getting much traffic many not be worth using.

You can also use the tool to find new keywords that people are already searching for.

This keyword exercise is not an exact science but should give you a little insight into which keywords to focus on.

PROFILES

After your research, you may want to write out your bio ahead of time so you don’t have to come up with one on the fly as you fill in your profiles. Get your wording right and include some of your target keywords if you can. If you use Word or some other text editor, you can simply cut-and-paste your bio into each profile.

The next step is signing up on the big four social networking sites and completely filling in your profile. I assume many reading this already have accounts on these networks, if this is your case, you’ll need to go through your profile to make sure it’s complete.

Note: I recommend having multiple Twitter accounts. Have at least one Twitter account for each of your websites, and one account for your own public persona.

Having complete and professional profiles is a critical; you will be judged by your profiles.

Here are some tips to having optimized and effective profiles:

• Profile Picture - Add a clear picture of yourself, preferably a head shot. It doesn’t have to be a professional shot, but realize that you’ll be instantly judged by your picture.


• Professional Headline/Description - Try to include your targeted keywords in your title and summary. Don’t force your keywords, make sure your headlines and description look natural.
  
  
  
  • On Facebook, you may use the Employers fields for your headline. This appears at the top of your profile and anywhere when people hover over your name.
  
  
  • On LinkedIn, this appears similar to the description you have indicated in your Current Position and appears below your name.
  
  
  • On Twitter, this is your Bio and appears next to your profile picture.
  
  
  • On Google+, this is your Introduction and appears on your profile and in Google Search results.
  
  
  
  


• Links - Each of the big four social networks allows you to have links on your profile. Use them! Link to your primary websites, Facebook and Google+ Pages and your social media profiles.


• On Facebook, be sure to include the http:// on your links to make them clickable.

Next: Seeding Your Accounts

SEEDING YOUR ACCOUNTS

One of the problems with social media is that it can be tough to get followers when you’re just starting out. When you have a low number of followers, circles, connections, Likes, etc., it tells people (perhaps unfairly), two things about you:

• you’re not popular; and


• I’m not going to grow my own network much by connecting you.

These are more reasons to grow your followers as much as you possibly can: a large following is a form of “social proof” to people who don’t know you. Another important reason is that your following becomes an asset that people will want a piece of, and one you can leverage.

It’s much, much easier to grow your social accounts when you have 1,000 connections compared to 10. But how do you make the leap from 10 to 1,000? Here are some ninja tools and tricks that will get you there quickly:

Import Your Contacts

Once you've cleaned your profiles, start seeding your social accounts using your email contacts. Add your Skype, MSN, Yahoo and Gmail contacts to each of your social network accounts.

Note: To add new contacts to Google+, you must add them to your Gmail contacts first. Then you can circle people in your Gmail contact list.
TIP: Import your Facebook friends into Yahoo Mail. If you don’t have a Yahoo Mail account sign up for one for free, it’s worth having for this tip. Then add your Yahoo contacts again to Twitter, Google+ (via Gmail) and LinkedIn. You’re sure to add a few extra contacts to each of these social networks.

OpenNetworker

This site can literally help you add thousands of connections on LinkedIn. Everyone who I’ve introduced to this site has added one to two thousand new connections in just a week or two! Sign up for a free account and then download the available lists of contacts. These are people who want to network and want to be added to your social accounts. Import these email addresses into each of your social networking accounts.

Note: On Facebook, identify yourself as an OpenNetworker, otherwise you may get complains and Facebook may restrict or even ban your account.

OpenNetworker has an optional paid subscription for $50 USD a year that allows you to add your contact information to the download lists (free accounts can only download the lists). For only $50 I feel it’s worth the cost as you’ll get friend new requests every week. One person I referred to this site added about 4,000 connections on LinkedIn alone in just a few months.

Free or paid, you may sign up here: OpenNetworker

Twiends

UPDATE: Tweinds has undergone a number of major changes during August 2013. They removed the auto-follow back feature, which was in response to a change in the Twitter TOS. At this time, they also do not give free seeds, including if you have a PAID SUBSCRIPTION. It's hard to fault them for removing the auto-follow feature, but the timing was terrible for taking away free seeds. Not giving free seeds to VIP's (paid subscribers) also lessens the value of subscriptions.

I'm leaving this part of the article unabridged in case Twiends brings back free seeds. You can still use Twiends to gain followers, but without auto-follow and free seeds it will be slower. If you are interested in learning about an advanced tool I use to grow my followers, please get in touch with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or Facebook.

Twiends is a free online service for Twitter that allows you to earn credits called “seeds” that you can exchange for followers. It gives people an incentive to follow regardless of your follower ratio.

So you follow people, build up your seeds, and other people follow to earn seeds from you. If it doesn't make sense, just take it from me, it works extremely well in growing followers fast!

After signing up, I recommend you head over to the setting's page and adjust them to be more conservative. This will help minimize unfollows from people who are just out to get seeds and not really interested with connecting with you on Twitter.

This last setting is critical in my view. When you’re getting follows on seeds you’ve built up, you should auto-follow those people back. You automatically earn more seeds since most people on Twiends offer them too.

The process of growing your Twitter accounts can be automated by buying seeds. They have some paid packages for buying seeds. You can walk away, and your account will grow automatically until you run out of seeds!

Now, if you shop similar services, Twiends can seem expensive. You can buy followers, which is another option for much cheaper than this. However, there are risks when you do that, you can get a lot unfollows and inactive accounts following you. Furthermore, it’s against Twitter’s terms of services to outright buy followers.

There are also a number of sites like Twiends that sell seeds cheaper. One is YouLikeHits.com which I’ve used before and is not bad. I've found Twiends to give me the best-quality followers. Also, they have some features I like and return seeds automatically if you've spent them on bad accounts.

Personally, I’ve had great results buying seeds from Twiends and even the smallest package can deliver 2,000 to 3,000 new followers if you have auto-follow turned on.

Facebook Page Likes and Google+ Page +1s

After a few days have passed since importing your contacts into Facebook and Google+, you may start soliciting Likes and +1s. You may want to wait a little longer than a few days to do this step and give your contacts more time to respond to your friend requests.

Once you've gone through these steps you should have a good base network to start with.

Next up: Groups, Pages and Automation...

GROUPS

Facebook and LinkedIn groups are a powerful way to get more connects, engage with your target audience and even get traffic directly to your website from posting in groups.

Find and join LinkedIn and Facebook groups in your niche. Join as many as you can, there’s no commitment or expectation after joining a group. As a member, these groups will be available to you for posting.

There is a limit on LinkedIn to 50 groups you can belong to simultaneously, but that should be enough for most people. On Facebook, the limit is 300.
I also suggest you start your own groups you control. Invite all your connections and friends to join your groups.

TIP: On your own groups, you can add an RSS from your site, so that your articles will post automatically to the LinkedIn group. Not only will your posts show in the group page for members to see, but your posts will also show up in the daily digest that gets emailed directly to members. It’s free email traffic, which is some of the most targeted traffic you can have. This is a very powerful LinkedIn feature that you should take full advantage of.

FACEBOOK PAGES AND GOOGLE+ PAGES

Both Facebook and Google+ give you the option of using each of the networks as your Page. This means when you Like or +1 something, it shows as coming from your Page instead of your personal account.

This is important in growing your Page Likes and +1. As you’ll see in the daily tasks, you will Like and +1 posts and comments as your Page to create interest for your Page.

To use each network as your Page, visit your Page and select the option under Edit Page on Facebook, and on Google+, use the ‘Switch to this page’ button.

Using Facebook and Google+ as your Page, browse through other people’s Pages in your niche and begin Liking, circling and +1ing them. This may get you some Likes and +1s and will send updates to your newsfeeds for easy discussion monitoring later.

AUTOMATION

To maximize your 20 minutes a day schedule, you can leverage some automation techniques to perform some sharing activates for you.

Use free online services such as Dlvr.it or Twitterfeed to auto post to your Twitter and Linked accounts and your Facebook Page from your RSS feed. Use Hootsuite to do the same for your Google+ Page.

Use these services for status update posts to LinkenIn, Twitter and your Facebook Page.

Here’s basically how auto-posting with these services works:

1. Copy an RSS feed from your site.


2. Add these feeds to an RSS auto-poster, like Twitterfeed.


3. Add your social accounts and setup Twitterfeed to post new items on your behalf.

How to use these services is beyond the scope of this article, but there are plenty of free and paid tutorials available to help you get started. Here are few auto-posting tips:

Your own website or blog is great for auto-posting. As soon as you publish a new article it will appear on the big four social sites. You can also set up auto-posted updates on your comments if your site has an RSS feed for them (like WordPress).

Find sites in your niche that produce quality content and use a few of these for auto-posting (more on this in the Content section).

Twitter followers can tolerate lots of updates; Facebook fan usually can’t. You can set up a feed to post as frequently as every 30 minutes for Twitter and you’re sure to get more followers every day. If you did the same with Facebook, you’d likely lose followers. LinkedIn is somewhere in between.
In other words, this strategy is great for Twitter but be careful with Facebook. Set up feeds to post at different frequencies for each social network (which can be set up on both services I mentioned).

When it comes to automation, this is just the tip of the iceberg. As you get comfortable with the technology, you can explore other automation tools and opportunities. Some of the 20-minute-a-day tasks can also be automated but only with paid tools. This is also an option.

If you spend about 20 minutes a day, this phase may take a week or less. This is the heavy lifting of the plan, from here on its easy street.

Next: Phase II...

PHASE 2: DAILY TASKS

The following daily tasks are some of the most effective social media activities you can do in a short timeframe. Of course, you can modify the tasks to fit your needs. Either way, take this opportunity to use a checklist that will provide daily direction and focus.

If you want to outsource your daily social media activities, this gives you a solid task list you can easily assign to a staff member.

Missing from these tasks is direct posting updates to your Facebook Page, Twitter and LinkenIn accounts. That’s because I recommend Dlvr.it, Twitterfeed or any other RSS posting service for these tasks. If you don’t want to use an RSS service for auto-posting, you may add posting updates to your daily plan.

Tasks to grow your audience:

1. Respond to any new comments on your website, LinkenIn posts, Facebook and Google+ Pages, Twitter retweets and mentions. Thank everyone and Like, +1, the original comment, and retweet Twitter mentions and retweets with a ‘thank you. ‘


2. Respond to all open friend requests, connection invitations, follow back new followers and circle everyone who has circled you since the previous day.


3. Sign in to Twiends and then sign out for each of your Twitter accounts. You’ll get 10 bonus seeds and if you have auto-follow turned on, that could mean 10 to 20 followers for each of your accounts every day you do this task.


4. Make at least one new post, or one new comment, in at least one LinkedIn and one Facebook Group.
   
   
   
   1. Tweet your posts using the built-in Tweet button (LinkedIn).
   
   
   2. Like and +1 the entire discussion for more exposure (LinkedIn).
   
   
   3. Like other people’s comments and post a response.
   
   
   
   


5. In Facebook, switch to using Facebook as your Page (see FACEBOOK PAGES AND GOOGLE+ PAGES). Like at least one comment on 20 to 30 Pages in your niche. (This sounds like a lot but it will only take a couple minutes.)


6. Make at least one new post each on your Google+ personal stream and your Google+ Page (the latter can be automated with RSS and Hootsuite).


7. Switch to using Google+ as your Page, then circle 20 to 30 (or any number you’re comfortable with). Find people in your niche to circle who have a strong following.


8. Make an indirect update (e.g., a funny or inspirational picture) to your Facebook and Google+ Page.

If you have time remaining…

9. Using Facebook as a Page, leave a few new comments or respond to someone else’s comment on other Pages.


10. Circle new people on Google+ using your personal page.


11. Answer one question in LinkedIn Answers.

When should you perform these tasks? There have been studies that show the best times to post for maximum views and engagement is the following (US Eastern Times):

1. 7 AM


2. 5 PM


3. 11 PM

It’s for this reason that I like to do my daily tasks first thing in the morning, and on some days, I repeat the tasks in the evening before I shut down my computer. Evenings are good because people are home from work and school.

Of course, this may vary depending on your own networks and where most of them live, when they like to be online, etc. A great tool to use is Crowdbooster, which will analyze your posts and your network, and recommend posting times for maximum effectiveness.

Next: Weekly Tasks...

Phase II: Weekly Tasks

In addition to your daily activities, you need one day each week for tasks that are not needed every day and for a little housekeeping.

Getting More Facebook Page Likes and Google+ Page +1s

To grow your Facebook Page Likes and Google+ Page +1s, there are several online groups and forums you can join that offer ‘Like swaps’: you Like my Page and I’ll Like yours. On LinkedIn, there are numerous groups you may join and add your Facebook Page, Google+ Page and Twitter links. If you are using OpenNetworker (see Seeding Your Accounts), chances are that you’ll be invited to many of these groups.

Join a few of these groups and add your links if your daily Facebook Page and Google+ Page growth is slow.

You may also invite new friends added to your accounts during the week to Like and +1 your Pages.

Housekeeping

You need to purge people who are no longer following you on Twitter and Google+. If your number of followers is disproportionally lower than the number of people you follow, that could send a red flag to potential followers. Twitter will also limit how many people you can add per day. If people see you follow a lot of people but few people are following in return, they are going to wonder why people are not following you back and may assume you’re a spammer or just very unpopular.

To maintain a balance you need to purge some of the people you follow who are not following you back. You also should give people a few days to follow you back. On Twitter, three days is enough, on Google you might go an entire week before you uncircle someone.

Here are a few free tools that will help you keep your accounts balanced:

Twitter: JustUnfollow.com (limited to 50 unfollows per day) or ManageFitter.com (limited to 100 unfollows per day)

Google+: Uncircle Uncirclers+ Chrome extension (doesn’t work for Google+ Pages –must do manually)

Unfollow starting with the people you’ve followed the longest, and limit your unfollowing to just portion of your unfollowers. That way, you’re giving the people you’ve followed recently a chance to follow you back. Make sense? This is hard to articliate, but when you start using these tools, I’m sure it will make much more sense.

Also on Twitter, if you don’t follow people back in a timely manner, they’ll think you’re not interested and quickly unfollow you. So it’s important to stay on top of new followers.

Keep in mind there are paid tools to help manage your social accounts. Tools that auto-follow and auto-unfollow are great because your Twitter accounts can grow so fast that they can be hard to manually keep current.

Note: Automated unfollowing is against Twitter’s terms of service, so use tools that have this feature at your own risk.

Next: Tools....

Phase II: Tools

There are numerous tools, both paid and free, that can help manage your social media activities. These tools range on the low end from making scheduled posts, to helping discover new people to follow, to higher-end products that can nearly automation you’re entire social media strategy.

I recommend you perform your daily tasks manually at least for a few weeks so you can properly judge how these tools work and what they actually do. The worst thing you can do is buy a tool based on hype then discover that there are free tools that do the same things.

One tool I strongly suggest you start using right now is your phone. By using social media apps on your smartphone, you can perform many of your daily tasks whenever you have idle time, such as waiting in line at the bank or at the doctor’s office. This is a great way to turn downtime into highly productive social engagement.

As you’re out running errands, you can stay following back new followers, accept friend requests, respond to comments, and even take interesting pictures for indirect updates. This will free up your time reserved for your daily tasks and allow you to devote more time for heavy lifting activities, which have more pay off.

Install the official apps for Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. All are free. In addition, install the official Pinterest app and any other apps that help you share content.

Tracking

You’ll need to keep track of your activities to evaluate their effectiveness. This information can be used to make any necessary adjustments to your tasks or schedule.

In the beginning, your goal may be to grow your networks. There are certain tasks that take longer than others, it’s important to know how much are these tasks contributing to your growth. This may be hard to gauge, if you suspect an activity is inefficient, give a break for a week and see if your growth rate is affected.

If your goal is to drive traffic to a website, get leads or make sales, those metrics may be easier to measure. Google Analytics can tell you how much traffic is coming from each of the social networks. You can also create campaigns in Google Analytics to measure leads and sales or use click-tracking software.
Facebook and Google have analytics to show Page engagement and which posts are getting the most views.
For Twitter, pay attention to what type of posts are being Retweeted and Favorited.

If you are auto-posting with Dlvr.it (see Automation) you’ll get free analytics that will report how many clicks each of your post received. This is extremely valuable information that can steer you in making posts that bring maximum results. Twitterfeed also offers some free stats, but they are not as robust as Dlvr.it.
Take note of patterns in what type of content your networks are responding to. Use this data to give them more of what they like.

Add your social accounts to Klout. Klout will analyze your social activity and calculate a “social credit score," and indicator of your reach and engagement. Klout can also be used to grow your networks. You can give people ‘K’s, which are Klout votes in categories of expertise. Use your Ks to reach out to people who have large followings to get their attention and follow you. If you have solid social accounts (optimized profiles, balanced following), you have a good chance of getting a followed by a social media leader when you hand out Ks.

The previously mentioned Crowdbooster can provide you with the best times to post to reach those already in your networks. Recommendations are based on analytics of your posting, not on surveys or studies. It’s based on hard data you can take action on.

Next up: Phase III...

PHASE 3: MAINTENANCE

This is an optional phase. If you’re comfortable with your daily social pace, then there’s no reason to change what you’re doing. I encourage you to keep it up!

However, if you’ve been pushing yourself to reach a level of growth, and you’ve reached your objective, then you may want to reduce the intensity. Adjust your daily tasks to focus only on the activities that use the least amount of time and provide continued engagement and some growth.

Beyond the Plan

The intention of this article was to provide you with a foundational plan to follow and execute every day. I continuously come across people using social media but not getting anywhere, because they don’t know where they are going. By now I hope you know exactly where you’re headed.

Of course, you can be much more aggressive with your social media activities than what was proposed in this article.



For example, you can grow your Twitter account faster by following 100-200 new people a day, same with Google+. This was not recommended in the daily plan because it causes two problems with new and smaller accounts:

• When people see a disproportionate amount of followers compared to followed, they assume that you are not popular or a spammer, and thus many will not want to follow you back.


• Twitter will restrict your account from following new people when your ratio of followed to followers reaches about 10%. (The ratio is not published, but in my experience, it seems to be about 10%.)

Once you reach enough followers, say 1,000, you can start to get more aggressive in growing your following. Keep in mind that you have to manage your ratio and use tools such as JustUnfollow.com or ManageFitter.com to purge non-followers each week (or every day if necessary).

As mentioned earlier, there are a number of paid services and very sophisticated tools that can accelerate your growth and automate your activity. This might be the next level in your business, or outsourcing your tasks to VAs.

Add more social posting to your plan. Post your article images to Pinterest if you haven’t already started. Create YouTube videos. Experiment with StumbleUpon, Reddit. These are all social sites that have brought in a ton of traffic for my sites.

You now have a plan, and in executing these tasks everyday you’ll gain an intimate knowledge of social media and your audience. Soon you’ll know exactly what you need to do next to achieve greater goals for your business using social media.