June 29, 2009 264 Comments

19 Presence Management Chores You COULD Do Every Day

Dan Bricklin and Sharel OmerIf you’re looking to establish your online presence, and build relationships, it’s not the kind of project where you show up, build your profiles, friend a few people, and call it good. It’s a lot like tending the farm. Here are seven particular “chores” you could do every day that should prove beneficial to your online interests.

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Twitter

  1. Find seven things worth retweeting in your general feed and share.
  2. Reply to at least five things with full responses (not just “thanks”).
  3. Point out a few people that you admire. It shows your mindset, too.
  4. Follow back at least 10 folks. (I use an automated tool, but this is a personal preference. If you want such, I use SocialToo.)
  5. 10 minutes of just polite two-way chit chat goes far.

Facebook

  1. Check in on birthdays on the home page. (Want a secret? Send the birthday wish via Twitter or email. Feels even more deliberate.)
  2. Respond to any comments on your wall.
  3. Post a status message daily, something engaging or interesting.
  4. Comment on at least seven people’s status messages or updates.
  5. Share at least 3 interesting updates that you find.
  6. If you belong to groups or fan pages, leave a new comment or two.

LinkedIn

  1. Accept any invitations that make sense for you to accept.
  2. Enter any recent business cards to invite them to LinkedIn (if you’re growing your network).
  3. Drop into Q&A and see if you can volunteer 2-3 answers.
  4. Provide 1 recommendation every few days for people you can honestly and fully recommend.
  5. Add any relevant slide decks to the Slideshare app there, or books to the Amazon bookshelf.

Blogs

  1. Visit your blog’s comments section and comment back on at least 5 replies.
  2. If you have a few extra minutes, click through to the blogs of the commenters, and read a post or two and comment back.
  3. While on those sites, use a tool like StumbleUpon and promote their good work.
  4. Write the occasional post promoting the good work of a blog in your community.

It’s Not Easy

Maintaining your online presence takes time. If you look at all I’ve listed above, that’s easily more than an hour of work. But it depends what the value of that presence is to you, if you’re doing this as an individual, or to your organization, if you’re doing this on behalf of a brand or product.

We’ve traded dollars for time, in lots of these equations, as we see the return on our advertising spend diminish. It’s your choice whether you want to maintain an active online presence, or if you want to get away with a bit less.

What do you think?

ChrisBrogan.com runs on the Genesis Framework

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  • http://twitter.com/calgreg greg cryns

    The fallacy regarding @Alex comments is that people have the time to monitor what YOU post all day. That is just silly. There is so much BS about Twitter.

    Let's say you have 2,000 followers. If you make a post you will be lucky if 40 of your followers see that specific post. That is 2% and I have some tests on it.

    Post the same thing again one hour later and the chances of the same people seeing that post are extremely low. After all, do YOU monitor all the posts that come from your followers at all hours of the day? I hope not unless you are a professional Twitter dude or dudette (though there seem to be some of those, too).

    I am cutting back on my Twitter time to maybe 1/2 hour a day (if I can control myself since I love Twitter so much). I am going to expand my Facebook presence greatly and also work on LinkedIn. If I give 1/2 hour to each of those, that leaves the rest of the day for productive thought and actions.

    This is one of my favorite posts ever, Chris. SOLID, printed out.

  • http://www.iangilyeat.com/ Elizabeth

    Thanks Chris for the great lists. Part of my job is maintaining the online presence for my company and not only does this list apply to personal online presence, but it is definitely applicable to maintaining a company presence as well. The trouble I have, is maintaining both.

  • http://twitter.com/percussion percussion

    Great list – suitable for printing up and tacking up on your wall to run through every day – or use as a model to tailor it a bit more specifically to your organization's specific needs and goals.

    I do have on addendum, however. The 20th, critical, item this list is missing is measurement. Make an attempt to tie your interactions to outcomes. It's challenging, and like anything else, takes some time – you won't see measurable results with every single tweet, LinkedIn answer, share, or comment – but you might uncover some surprises. And if you can believably tie a deal or sale to a micro-interaction, you'll be a lot more likely to get happy buy-in for further investment in the medium.

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  • http://twitter.com/christammiller christammiller

    Thanks, Jeff. CEO is fine with transparency & participation — VP/product development will be involved in upcoming white papers and media relations efforts, for one thing.

    This is a fairly new company seeking to establish a brand reputation… still working on getting customers to start with! Part of the issue, we're finding, is that they are coming to social media slowly. We are trying to figure out what our place is in helping them to come online. (The company's value proposition is based on online presence.)

  • http://blog.hafchurch.org/peter Peter P

    There's a good way for you to make a few dollars: print off little reminder sheets for people to stick on their monitors, just a few inches wide. Have them laminated and sell them for $2 a piece.

    This is all great advice… What it requires from us is a little organization, dedication and effort.

    Thanks!

  • Nikhil Vaswani

    Thats a lot of sites with a lot of uses! But I guess, soon one will see convergence in social networking sites. Much like the search engines where Google has emerged as the leader. Till that point of time, its up to us to utilize the above sites to the maximum.

    By the way, I am new to LinkedIn and have found this resource quite useful. It is a new book called “How to REALLY use LinkedIn” by networking expert Jan Vermeiren. Check it out, you can find a free lite version at http://www.how-to-really-use-linkedin.com/

  • http://www.jonbishop.org JonBishop

    I wanted to expand a bit on number 18.

    I also thinking picking a social bookmarking platform and sticking with it has huge benefits. Specifically if you are using the bookmarking site to promote your own material, promote interesting material by others and promote material about you or your brand.

    I make it a point to do all 3 of those things a few times a week in StumbleUpon and I've seen a significant traffic increase since I've fully embraced the service. Using SU.PR (stumbleupon's new short url service) has also made this whole process a lot easier.

  • http://www.lifewithoutpants.com Matthew

    Chris. Good advice sir. I wrote a piece last week on the value we as bloggers and entrepreneurs place on your community. The bottom line: You get what you give. The more involved and engaged you are within your community audience, they more willing they will be participate in discussions and promote you. Make time for them and they'll be more than happy to sing your praises.

  • http://www.bigpictureweb.com jlbraaten

    You've talked these “e-chores” in the past, Chris, but it's good to see you reminding us what it takes to stay out there, building your brand. You could easily add in several more hours of work if you're link building or reading/comments on other blogs.

  • marvinforte

    Very helpful tips. Most of them are common sense but it's a great reminder/checklist for all of us.

    The lesson I have learned is that getting involved takes lots of consistent small tasks. It's easy to get discouraged by the big picture, just spend a few minutes here and there and over time, it adds up.

    I give my clients advice about how to get more involved in Social Media and this list will help me give them better advice. Thanks Chris!

  • http://twitter.com/lindar Linda Rogers

    I really liked the concise rundown here. Good to know that the hour I spend doing this stuff is about average

  • http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/ Laura

    Don't forget the LinkedIn groups. Participating in professional groups on LinkedIn is a great way to collaborate with people outside of your network and meet new professionals you might want to connect with.

    Laura

  • http://www.yourcoach.com/ Tom Ferry

    Thanks for these 19 points … I need to get more up to date with LinkedIn.!

  • http://blog.filmosity.com ChrisCavs

    Good post. Coming up with a similar list for my own ventures has been on my todo list, but it's good to have your perspective too.

  • http://travelsocial.blogspot.com/ Roseanne

    An excellent list of daily habits for establishing an influential online presence. Now all I need is a list for how to add more hours to the day! I will try my best! Thanks, @TravelSocial

  • http://twitter.com/clovia Kelly Corn

    Thank you, this is a great place for me to start; I've been “facebooking” for years, but only recently tried using Twitter (more for my business than for personal), and it really can be overwhelming!

  • http://www.ericmiller.name/ Eric Miller

    Thanks Chris for another excellent post.

  • http://twitter.com/ClearedJobsNet ClearedJobsNet

    Great list of actions: PayItForwardFriday is one way we keep a positive spin on making sure people remember to recommend people.

  • Deb G

    I think this is a good “to do” list — especially for folks who are newer to the concept of using Social Media to boost their professional and/or business presence.

  • gacconsultants

    Excellent chores here Chris… this is manageable, doesn't take but 1 or 1.5 hrs or so to complete the work and is an interactive way to build a presence on multiple platforms. Thanks for sharing : ) think I will share it too…

    Mark

  • http://www.vbpoutsourcing.com/ Tessa Carroll

    Hey Chris,

    Great tips! When you see everything broken down the way you did here, it definately makes managing your online presence simpler. It also helps you make sure that everything you're doing is relevant, not just mundane and day to day (I really hate when people Twitter or update Facebook with things like “Now I'm eating lunch”).

    On that note, I have passed this information onto our SEO/Social Media manager here at VBP. This post is a must-read for anyone running an SEO/SEM program.

    Keep the information coming. And kudos on the great work!

    Tessa Carroll
    VBP OutSourcing

  • http://twitter.com/noahvail Noah Masterson

    I followed a few steps here, including adding a few answers on LinkedIN, and immediately made a potentially lucrative connection. Thanks!

  • http://www.twitter.com/kevshindig kevshindig

    Does this mean I've been wasting my time of friendster?!?

  • http://www.greeblemonkey.com/ Aimee Greeblemonkey

    Yup yup yup. I always love how you focus on relationships rather than numbers.

  • http://www.thewaythatyouwander.com/ Nate

    What I love about this post is that everyone and their brother talks about how you need to work hard to manage and improve your online presence (including myself). But they don't say HOW to do it with an exact plan. You just provided this plan. Awesome.

  • Jay

    Did you actually just write that being friends with people is a chore that should prove beneficial to your online interests?

    It might “feel even more deliberate” if you sent that to each of your friends in a tweet!

    … you're starting to scare me with this stuff, man.

  • http://www.thinkhmh.com/ Heather Dougherty

    I'll second all of that whole-heartedly! It can be especially challenging when there are few client-side resources to maintain efforts and those on-board with social media in the first place are limited to the Marketing department. I do not personally recommend having us (the agency) communicate on their behalf as I've seen it end badly in many (very public) cases. I keep working at evolving the collaboration piece of the social media strategy to help alleviate some of the burden without committing to representing them full-time. Work in progress, as I'm sure you know.

  • http://www.TheSmallBusinessGuru.com smbizguru

    Wonderful list! And a great post idea for me to talk about on my blog to my readers – with my own twist of course ;)

    However I disagree with the first “gentleman” re: tweeting your own information more than once a day – especially if you don't have the followers that Chris does that will retweet a really terrific post like this one over 600 times.

    My reasoning behind recommending that my readers tweet their blog posts / articles throughout the day is because most followers don't sit at their computers all day long and might only see in once depending on when they sit down. I don't read every single tweet that goes by even of my favs like Chris Brogan. If some of your followers don't get on Twitter until after work they will very likely miss what you tweeted about in the morning,

    But as Chris pointed out – his first item on the list was to find OTHER PEOPLE'S TWEETS that are valuable and RT. I usually do this several times throughout the day.

    • http://www.lacostepoloshirts.co cheap lacoste polos

      an interactive way to build a presence on multiple platforms. Thanks for sharing

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Kerry-McCabe/1105337483 Kerry McCabe

    I am grateful for the suggestions on social networking. As a small business owner specializing in Women First Time Home Buyers, Residential Leasing & Affordable Lakefront Vacation Property, I am constantly trying to maximize my marketing dollars while effectively staying in front of my market. I have a deep appreciation for social networking and believe it is the way of the future. I take that back it is the way NOW!

  • http://twitter.com/lsophie09 Sophie Latulippe Oue

    I personally need to see more step by step article such as this one. I find that there is a lack of practical advice…. I've been through university and have become suspicious of people who give too much theory.

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  • srinin

    PRO = PResence Online? LOL!
    Good practical tips. Yeah, time consuming though! But nothing strained nothing gained, ain't it?

  • srinin

    PRO = PResence Online? LOL!
    Good practical tips. Yeah, time consuming though! But nothing strained nothing gained, ain't it?

  • http://twitter.com/artoflearning Sandeep Mahajan

    Great advice & full of common sense. While the initiatives listed may seem time consuming, the benefits can be enourmous

  • http://svnote.cn/ steven

    Yes,it's not a easy thing to do,the key is persist to do this!

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  • http://twitter.com/denisr Denis

    hey Chris,

    lovely social schedule! :D

    what about linkedin?

  • http://twitter.com/denisr Denis

    ho dear, I am sorry, I just noticed the linkedin section!

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  • http://twitter.com/GJUniversity German Jordanian Uni

    Thank you very much for an informative article … As I have just taken over as the Director of Marketing and Communications for this university in the Middle East, which by the way has never done any marketing in their 5 years of existence, I found your suggestions to be right on the money …

    I am currently constructing our social networking presence, and I will be sure to follow your advice in maintaining and building that presence … Aside from the sites you mentioned, are there any others you would recommend? I am thinking to concentrate on 5 or 6 sites and would appreciate any recommendations you may have …

    Gregory Morris

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  • http://twitter.com/CapeCodChick Kim Lucas

    I love your blog. But I must say that several of my co-worker's still need to have a hard copy when I share. Could you add the functionality to print a copy of your posts without the comments below? They could still get the heart of a post without killing so many trees.

    Thanks

  • http://www.seanfitzroy.com Fitzroy

    #11 is huge! I've started accepting LinkedIn invitations that make sense for me to accept. Makes a world of difference.

    I think the inverse is probably true too: don't accept the invitations that don't make sense. (maybe a separate bullet, or post?). Of course, everyone has their own criteria for deciding what makes sense regarding managing their own presence online, but definitely choose based on that criteria once you've defined it.

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