My Day to Day Social Media Experience: Facebook, Twitter, Blogher, Daring Bakers, Flickr

People often ask me "How do you do it?" Meaning how do I keep up using multiple social media accounts. Here's what I did when I woke up this morning. It took me 25 minutes to check in and interact on all of the following social media websites:

Facebook

1. Login to my personal Facebook account from my bookmark bar.
2. Read and catch up on what my friends have been up to.
3. Reply to comments friends have left on my profile page.
4. Post about things I want to say or help publicize.
5. Respond to friend's status updates as shown above.

Twitter

1. Login to my Twitter account from my bookmark bar.
2. Check "Mentions" and thank the people who mentioned me. I had no idea there was a tab for this until about a month ago. Turns out people had been saying all kinds of nice things about my posts on Twitter for months and I hadn't responded or thanked anyone :( As Homer Simpson would say "Doh!"
3. Follow back new followers I find interesting.
4. Tweet something.
5. Check for retweets to see if anyone has cross posted one of my tweets.

BlogHer

1. Login to Blogher through my bookmark bar.
2. Check for new comments on my syndicated article "The Hierarchy of Social Media Marketing" and reply thanking each person and answering any questions they may have.
3. Check out home page for new featured articles I might find interesting.

The Daring Kitchen

1. Login to The Daring Kitchen through my bookmark bar once I complete my monthly challenge.
2. This month's Daring Baker's Challenge is publishing tomorrow. I posted my images and description in the private forum 2 nights ago and answered another baker's question about this month's challenge so I'll check back for any comments or questions other bakers may have left so I can reply to them.
3. Check out the forum and take a peek at all of the newly posted finished projects and be amazed at everyone's creativity!

flickr

1. Login to the flickr photo sharing website by typing in the url. I need to add it to my bookmark bar.
2. Changed my account email address because I just realized the one I had set the account up with years ago is now defunct so I hadn't received any notifications about  new comments left by other flickr members. Turns out there is an entire community of people who will comment on and favorite your photos. I had no idea. I posted some photos on flickr 8 months ago only to discover this past week that people have been commenting on some of them since then. Double Doh! 
3. Today I added 3 new images for and added a single image to a group (Daring Bakers Look Good) I joined yesterday. Later when I began this blog post I added the five images you see here and took the above screenshot.

This Afternoon I will

1. Check back into Facebook, Twitter, Blogher and The Daring Kitchen. It won't take as long this time (probably 15 minutes or less) as it did in the morning though unless I need to reply back to people who have asked me direct questions.

Tonight I will

1. Check back into Facebook, Twitter, Blogher and The Daring Kitchen (will take probably 15 minutes or less).
2. Take a peek at my RSS Reader (where I subscribe to the blogs I follow) for new posts
3. Try to start leaving some comments on other people's blogs after I read their posts

And that's it. A step by step explanation of how I keep up with all of my social media accounts! In the big scheme of things I spend about an hour a day, some days more others less, to maintain these accounts. That may seem like a lot of time but it's worth it (especially) if you don't have the budget to pay to advertise because you're just starting out or the recession has really taken a toll on your sales. It's really a small investment of time with a potentially large return. And IMO it's imperative, if at this point in time, you are only using social media to market your company, cause or interest.

For me, I've chosen to predominately market with social media because I think it will bring the right readers over to my blog and website. Those with a genuine interest in the content I'm producing because they either sought out the information they found through a search engine, or someone gave them a word of mouth recommendation via their blog, social media website or a direct email to come check out The Flirty Guide and The Flirty Blog.

But what about Blogging?

• I'm classifying Blog Posts into an entirely different category than the other methods in this example but will say that I try to post 4-5 times per week with posts that range from 15 minutes to an hour or more to create. Why do I invest so much time into blogging? Because I've found what I create in my blog has the furthest reach and brings the most new visitors to my website and blog. It's mostly because of my blog that I have things to post about on Facebook, Twitter, Blogher, The Daring Kitchen and flickr!