2009 has been a breakout year for sports and social media. Athletes, teams, leagues, coaches, media and sponsors have finally started to take note of how social media impacts sports and fans. There have been some really great executions and ideas as well as some missteps.
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My Social Media System
Posted on February 2nd, 2009
I was recently inspired by John Jantsch and Chris Brogan when they shared their individual systems for managing their social media activity. I thought this was a very good exercise to 1) evaluate where/how I’m spending most of my time these days and 2) force myself to see if I can become more efficient by sticking to an overall plan and improving time-management where possible. I, like John, had never really considered the full-scope of my social media “routine.” I’ve had a plan for awhile now for promoting certain articles I write, and I’ve thought about ways to become more efficient in individual areas, but I had never actually written EVERYTHING I do down. Well, here it goes. (thumbnail image from 5ones.com)
Main Tools
- Firefox – still the best browser around (even if it crashes sometimes), though I have used Flock some and am starting to like it
- Google tools – mainly Gmail, Reader, Calendar
- Delicious for bookmarking interesting content (though I use evernote occasionally for online receipts). Its integration with Firefox is great
- Twitter tools
- Easy Tweets – enables me to efficiently manage multiple accounts
- TweetGrid – Twitter search dashboard that updates in real-time
Workflow
Constant/Every Hour
- Monitor my Twitter accounts – Join interesting conversations, respond to comments, talk about my love for UNC Basketball, etc
- Check email on 3 accounts – yeah, I know, I need to cut back
Daily
- Check Facebook accounts and wish friends happy birthday. Unlike some other people, I keep my personal Facebook account for real-life friends only, and use a company account to network with people and find potential partners/customers. I’m not saying this is the right/only way to do it, but it works for me.
- Monitor important keywords on Twitter and seek out new followers
- Write blog posts and post to Twitter, Facebook and occasionally other news aggregation sites and communities.
- Send notes to friends/bloggers if it makes sense
- Bookmark articles I like (or ones I want to read later) using Delicious
- Read articles and leave comments on sports news aggregation sites such as Ballhype and Yardbarker
- Leave comments on interesting blogs
- Check Google analytics to see what is going on with traffic (new visitors coming in from new keywords and links, unusually high or low traffic, etc.) and investigate if necessary
Twice Weekly/Almost Daily
- Participate in and read articles from other communities such as BallisLife, Sports Marketing 2.0 and Digg
- Scan/read articles in Google reader from a variety of blogs and topics, including feeds for mentions of my name, company names and competitor names
- Check Sports Biz Feed (disclosure: I created this site) for recent sports marketing/business headlines
- Check out Friendfeed and see what’s going on there
- Watch new videos from friends and subscriptions on YouTube and leave comments
- Sign into LinkedIn and scan updates (groups and friends). Lately, I’ve been trying to answer and ask more questions to get more value out of this site.
- Check out Facebook groups to see if there are any conversations worth participating in
- Update my status on my Facebook account
Needs Improvement
I’d like to work on building closer connections with my existing contacts. I DEFINITELY need to check email less, while I’d like to check Friendfeed more. I’d also like to spend more time on Flickr and upload/tag more pictures.
I may have left some things out here, but I think this covers most of it. What do you think about this system, if the goal is to build/monitor/make connections for my personal and company brands (while having a little fun and learning new things)?
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Comments 5
February 3rd, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Jason – You are an inspiration. As a neophyte to this social media universe, I accomplish about 1/5 of what you do with social media and technology. But, thanks to your outline, I have a few new things, sites to consider.
February 5th, 2009 at 10:08 am
I love the idea of having a personal social media plan. I tend to do a lot of the things you list here, but I do them in waves, sometimes spending more time blogging, other times more on Twitter, etc. I love Facebook and LinkedIn, but there will be times I forget to visit them altogether.
Plans and schedules will definitely vary by goals, comfort level, industry, etc, but creating a basic structure like this can be a great tool. The only addition I would make is to start with a goal/mission right up front, so you can make sure all your work ties back to your goals (with all the fun toys out there, one can get easily distracted!)
February 5th, 2009 at 10:32 am
@Russell great point about the need for goals. I definitely agree with you there.
@Dan thanks for your kind words!
February 5th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Wow, Jason, I don’t see how you can get much work done with all of these routines. Checking twitter daily I can understand, but hourly? doesn’t all of this cut into your “flow” of doing real work?
Also checking google analytics daily seems excessive – are you really going to always take *actions* on a day to day basis by seeing stats?
February 5th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
@Mark my work IS being so tightly involved in all of these site and communities, so that is where I spend a lot of time. Checking google analytics (for some websites) is crucial because it allows me to see where traffic is coming from, and if there’s a spike, figure out why it happened/where it came from/how to take advantage of it.