10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Six

23Feb 2010 by Bob Cargill

6. Leverage a number of channels.

It’s one thing to tweet a few times a week, write a blog post once a month and update your profile on LinkedIn if you happen to land a new job. But it’s quite another to be active on a handful of social media channels on a daily basis.

That’s right, the most accomplished social media mavens don’t occasionally go online. They practically live online.

Instead of checking email and voice mail, they’re responding to a steady, endless stream of comments, questions and requests from their friends, fans and followers.

Instead of sitting in meetings all day, they’re sitting in front of a variety of screens, tap, tap, tapping away in the name of meaningful engagement with their constituencies.

Instead of working nine to five, they’re on call morning, noon and night, whenever they’re near their Blackberries, iPhones, laptops and notebooks.

But it’s not just a matter of putting in all this time. To succeed in social media means to be active in more places than one.

Are you writing a new blog post at least once a week? Are you using Facebook for both personal and professional reasons? On LinkedIn, are you writing recommendations of others, sharing your presentations and participating in groups? Are you logging on to Twitter at least several times a day? Do you have your own YouTube channel? How about FriendFeed, Delicious, Google Reader and Buzz?

Sure, for a number of reasons – time and talent, chief among them – not every social media channel is for everyone. But let’s face it, if you’re only using one or two of them, you’re barely scratching the surface.

This is the sixth in a 10-post series on how to succeed in social media. Over the course of the next few months, I’ll publish the balance of the series, one post at a time (not necessarily consecutively), here on my blog, A New Marketing Commentator. Please stay tuned. And if you have any feedback on this series for me, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. Thanks.

Previous Posts in This Series…

10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part One
Adopt the right company culture.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Two
Set realistic expectations.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Three
Create enough quality content.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Four
Stand for your brand.
10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Five
Work as a team.

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3 thoughts on “10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Six”

  • Hi Bob,

    I have to disagree with the following statement:

    “the most accomplished social media mavens don’t occasionally go online. They practically live online.”

    The reality I see for people like Guy Kawasaki and others in his league is the fact that they do not live online. Instead they hire people to ghostwrite their Twitter account(s), answer comments on their blog(s), and monitor their personal “brand.”

    In Kawasaki’s case, he is online but he comes nowhere near living there. Neither does Tim O’Reilly and folks, again, in that social media stratosphere. Thanks

  • Thanks for the comment, Dean. It’s really good to hear from you.

    If the folks you’re referring to – those in the “social media stratosphere” – aren’t spending all that time online themselves, then someone must be acting on their behalf. After all, someone has to be doing the work, establishing the presence, managing the activity, engaging with constituents, etc. And whoever that is has to be “practically living online” to be successful at that level. No?

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