Seven steps to social media engagement

Social media tools and technology are rapidly emerging as essential places for trusted advisors and practice professionals to build their reputation and expand their business networks.

With the dizzying array of tools and sites out there, it can be difficult to know where to start or what to do after you start.

With this in mind, here are several suggestions for how to start using social media tools immediately with some ideas about what to do tomorrow and in the weeks and months to come. Let’s begin with what you can do today:

Get LinkedIn. Create a profile on LinkedIn, the most popular business networking site or update the profile you already have but haven’t looked at for several months. Post a friendly-looking, professional image of yourself. Look up your colleagues and see what information is on their profiles. Emulate the best ones.

Build connections. Once you’ve whipped your LinkedIn profile into shape, go through your contacts and start making connections with them on LinkedIn. I don’t recommend you upload your whole contact list. Just work your way through a few of your contacts each day and ask for connections from the people you know best. Aim for quality, not quantity. For best results, try personalizing the message requesting a connection – for instance, “Nice seeing you the other day. We should have coffee soon.”

Join the half a billion people using Facebook. Create a profile or update the one you have (use the same picture as LinkedIn). This is a good place to experiment with social media and build up your skills. Start sharing status updates and links to interesting articles and online content. Get into the habit of regularly reading and commenting on your friends’ posts. Show your personality, but be professional.

Get on Twitter and start following. Create a Twitter account and start following people you are interested in – subject matter experts and analysts, colleagues and competitors. Most major media outlets are on Twitter so this can be a great way to customize your own information stream and stay on top of key industry news and developments. Don’t feel you have to start “tweeting” immediately – you don’t. Just listen for a while.

Read and comment. Visit trade blogs and read articles of interest to you. Make sure to read the comments too. When you have spent some time on a site and feel familiar with the readership, add a comment. Make sure it’s thoughtful and adds value to the conversation. Avoid ranting and don’t waste time engaging ranters.You should be able to get started with all of the above tasks within an hour or two. Each day, you should dedicate a few minutes – as much as you can afford – to continuing each of these tasks. Within a few weeks, you’ll find your social media outreach activities will start to get feedback: you’ll get connection requests, people will start following YOU on Twitter, and your blog comments will engender responses.

Now, you’re ready for more engagement. Consider doing the following:

Start blogging. Social media is about creating and consuming content and your blog is your publishing platform. Blogging software is low cost or free, so its easy to get started. Write about your subject matter expertise and/or your interests. Be professional but show some personality. Remember: Attention spans can be short online so keep your content interesting and focused. Try planning out your articles for the next few months and outlining your content before you publish anything.

Start sharing content. If you read something online and you find that it is well-written or exceptionally helpful, share it. Do this by updating your LinkedIn status with a link to the article or share it on Twitter. Start looking for opportunities to share good content created by key influencers in your space but also look for content you have created – maybe a great Powerpoint presentation – that you can share on SlideShare or a video interview that you can link to.Follow these steps and dedicate some time to it every day and you will start to see the full potential of social media engagement for your practice.