You log into twitter and facebook everyday, and everyday you read tweets, you comment on your friends facebook wall, you retweet blog post, at the end of the day, what are your social media goals? What are you trying to achieve from social media?
A tweet caught my attention recently. It was from Jerimiah Owyang aka @Jowyang, in his tweet, he mentioned that if we post 20 tweets a day we should blog and pay ourselves first. It got me thinking about the amount of time that we spent on social networking daily and whether it is influencing our productivity time.
I love twitter and I love spending time, reading and engaging with people. It is just who I am. I don’t spend much time blogging though, I have 113 blog post written at this point. However, this tweet got me thinking if I should concentrate more time creating content blogs. Questions I @AskAaronlee .. oh wait that is ME.. . Time to re-write my own goal. @ChrisBrogans hit the nail when he said
“If you don’t stick to your goals, there’s no reason to put any time into social media, period”
So what are your social media goals ? Do you want to?
- Get attention from other bloggers?
- Make x-amount of money from social networking sites?
- Brand yourself better?
- Get the latest news?
- Connect with celebrities?
- Connect with influential users?
- Connect with new people outside your circle of friends?
- Get more leads for your business?
- Get new leads for your business?
- Get x-amount of followers on twitter?
- Get x-amount of likes on facebook
If you don’t have a goal, get one today! and if you’re thinking why you aren’t successful, I recommend you read Chris Brogan’s why you aren’t as successful as you want to be, its a great blog post.
photo credits: by JohnONolan
Leon Widrich says
Great post aaron, I believe it is really important to have social media goals. Equally important is to remind yourself of what your goals are and to recalibrate. The old technique also Chris Brogan recommended in your quoted post to simply have it written out on paper and seeing it everyday is something I am going to do from now an.
Oh, and my goal? I want to brand our product better in the future and connect better with bloggers. 🙂
What are yours btw? Thought I would find out in the post 🙂
Sunita Bhagatjee says
Good post. I have more than one goal on social media, (Twitter has become my favourite haunt): I want to create a brand for myself, connect with people outside my friends network, learn from people who are leaders in their field.
Aaron Lee says
Hello Sunita,
You’ll find that twitter will be the best way for you to do that. Next on the list would be finding a strategy which I am sure you’re doing well.
Aaron
Aaron Lee says
Good day Leon,
Thanks you for dropping by, I agree, it is important to have a goal like Chris mention. Looks like I have to write down mine on a piece of paper like you do. Have you done it yet?
Seeing how you’re posting comments on blogs, I am sure you’re on the rick track in reaching your goal.
LoL! I wanted to write mine above, then I decided to make it about the people and not just about me. Maybe in the future post.
Aaron
Leon Widrich says
Many thanks for your reply Aaron, yep I have done it after I have read your post. Just tweeted you the pic, lol. Let me know when you get yours ready 😉
http://yfrog.com/h3zwpeqj
Really looking forward to read about your goals! 🙂
Elise M says
Hi Aaron, GREAT point you made here. I probably tweet more than 20 times a day. I have a new found love for Twitter… I just love being on it, and I probably waste more time on it than I should.
In terms of social media goals, I just want to spread more and interact more with others. I’m focusing more on social media these days rather than traditional SEO. Now that search is taking more of a social turn, I feel like it’s a good idea to engage more on social sites.
Great post!
Thomas says
Hello Aaron
First of all this is my first visit at your blog. I am pretty new to Blogging (3 month) so I am just starting to building up my social network on twitter. I think I have about 50 followers so far. I use twitter to connect with other bloggers and to keep up with news that I am interested in. It is a great way to connect with other people, but it can also sometime be a distraction having twitter open in a browser tab.
See you around Aaron
Brankica U says
Hey Aron, nice list of questions and they soooo make sense. When I think of social media I think of Twitter first, cause that is what I use the most.
I spend a loooot of time there, but I am having a blast cause I met so many great people. I guess I started to use it to promote my blog, but that what I do the least. If there wasn’t for Tweet Old Posts plugin, I would not tweet about my blog for two days sometimes, lol.
I guess the goal is to connect with more people, because what happened is that all these connections, rather than plain affiliate links on my blog, are what makes some money.
Thanks for opening some questions and I will definitely give this some more thought.
Adrienne says
Hey Aron,
My goals are all lumped into 1! I write out what I need to accomplish for the day and that includes everything. Visiting sites like Twitter and Facebook, I limit myself to what I need to accomplish there and then I get off. I caught myself spending WAY too much time there when I first was introduced to those social media sites.
I learned really quickly that if you are doing something that is not going to benefit you in the way of making money then you need to stop doing it. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE helping others and commenting on other people’s blogs. I have learned SO much from just doing that so I still believe it benefits me in the long run plus it helps drive more traffic to my site.
So I’m a stickler for getting the job at hand completed first and then I can spend more time playing around. We all need to live and learn I guess!!!
Thanks for this post, was a great reminder!
Adrienne
Aaron Lee says
Hello Elisa,
Thank you, I think we all love twitter don’t we. I think at long as you’re building a community, it should be alright. No time wasted.
It is also a good idea to focus more on social media, than just SEO. I did the opposite, i went full force in social media and not much on SEO. Now I am concentrating on SEO lol.. Learning as much as I can.
Thanks for sharing your goal.
Aaron
Aaron Lee says
Hello Thomas,
Thank you for dropping by, hope to make you drop by more often. I think you’re on your right track seeing that you do spend time commenting on blogs as it is one way to build relationship with bloggers and connecting with new people.
Yes! indeed it can be a distractions if we keep twitter on our tab. LoL! I schedule tweets and close em sometimes.
Seey you around.
Aaron Lee says
Hello brankica,
Thank you for the compliment, I try to add as much as I can to the list. You’re on your right track to make connecting with more people as your goal. As for the posting tweets to promote your blog, in my personal opinion, as long as your keeping it in a ratio or 10:1 where after every tweet about your blog post, you can make 10 tweets about others whether its a retweet, an engagement etc.
Should be alright 🙂
Thanks for sharing.
Aaron Lee says
Hi Adrienne,
Thank you for sharing your thoughtful post, I agree with it completely. Sometimes we spend too much time indeed trying to do too much, and the best way is to make sure that what we do help us to get us closer to our goal, similar like what you said. Unless we have some extra time after we did what we needed to do.
Thank again for sharing your insights.
Aaron
Mark W. Schaefer says
This is solid advice. In the first five minutes of my social media marketing classes I start with strategy. And in the last class, we also tie it back to strategy. If you don’t have goals you are wasting your time and money.
Good job!
Mark W. Schaefer says
This is solid advice. In the first five minutes of my social media marketing classes I start with strategy. And in the last class, we also tie it back to strategy. If you don’t have goals you are wasting your time and money.
Good job!
Aaron Lee says
You started your first give minutes of your social media classes with a strategy? How does it work Mark?
Thank you for the compliment, you just made day man! 🙂
Mike says
The most difficult is to stick to it. Too many people give up too easily. It’s a good thing they get the internet to help them for advise.
I would like to share my social network with you as I think it will provide some great times, a community of goals and achievers is the best way to succeed. Goalchiever.com