Efficient Network Growth on Social Media

Social media is all about networking, but if you’re strapped for time, you may need more efficient strategies for growing your network. 

By now, most business owners understand that social media is the way to go when it comes to promoting their business, but most people aren’t as efficient as they could be. It’s possible to spend hours every day on Twitter and Facebook and still find yourself stumbling along at the back of the pack. Fortunately, there are some techniques to streamline your network growth on all social media networks.

Have a Plan Laid Out

Without a plan, you’re just running in circles on any social media site. What are your goals for your social media efforts? What are you hoping to achieve? How will you get there? Knowing where you’re going will give you purpose and that will show up in your interactions.

Whether your plan is to drive more traffic to your website or to increase your number of potential business contacts, know what it is you want and how you want to get it. Then follow your plan.

Set a Time Limit

Social media can be a real time suck, where you get on intending to post a link and end up reading other people’s updates for an hour. The best way to avoid this and to make your time online more efficient is to set a time limit for yourself.

Ten minutes per day, per social media site, is usually more than enough to get everything you need to done. You can either use your time all at once, or you might want to split it over the day, but the idea here is to ensure that you don’t get carried away. Consider setting an alarm to help you remember when your time is up.

Cash in on World Events

Did something huge just happen somewhere in the world? By staying on top of current events, you can ensure that you are one of the first people to mention it on your social media networks. This almost guarantees people will be sharing or retweeting your status. Make sure you link to the original news source to give more perspective. In most cases, you’ll end up with more followers simply because they realize that you are on top of things.

Do be careful as to what news you choose to pass on. While there are many sad events every day in the world, you may find that people are more interested in happy news. Try it and see what the response is like. As with any social media techniques, testing is always recommended.

Use Hashtags

If you don’t know what hashtags are, you are probably confused by references on Twitter to things like #itsmylife and #americanidol. These are like small clubs on Twitter and all the tweets using the same hashtag can easily be accessed by clicking on the tag. That opens up a whole world of potential new followers and while you can find plenty of interesting people by following the hashtags that interest you, you’ll find that it is also an excellent method of gaining new followers, as well.

This method goes very well with staying on top of foreign affairs and news, since you can then use the news as the hashtag. Top television shows, particularly reality shows, are also a good way to use hashtags. Try to stick to things that are relevant to your business, however, since these will be people most interested in your business and more likely to follow you.

Actively Engage

There are millions of people using social media networks these days and it can rapidly become confusing for the average person. You’ll find yourself struggling to keep up with everyone, particularly if you follow more than ten or twenty people, but this doesn’t have to stop you. Instead, learn to skim and then start to actively engage with a handful of people who interest you.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should interact with everyone who follows you. Instead, make sure that you talk regularly with the chosen people. Your network will grow and you will find yourself with a number of new followers, simply by having a conversation with someone.

Use Filters

To make it easier to keep track of what is going on while using a site like Twitter, which can rapidly become confusing with so many tweets, try using a site like Hootsuite or something similar which allows you to filter your stream and see at a glance if anyone is talking to you. This makes life much easier and you can easily respond to anyone speaking directly to you, without sifting through hundreds of unrelated tweets.

Social media is a huge part of marketing these days, but that doesn’t mean you have to let it take up too much time. Plan ahead, set time limits and you should be able to build your networks without spending hours on it.