Social Media for Professionals

There’s no hiding from it anymore: social media has become one of the most important weapons in the marketing arsenal. It doesn’t matter if your blog is the most authoritative on a given subject, if no one is reading it. You need to spread the word!

Spending time on social media needn’t mean wasting time. There are many advantages to using these technologies, including, but not restricted to, the following:

• Put yourself / your blog forward
• Show off your skills
• Keep up to date on your area of interest/expertise
• Take part in conversations with fellow bloggers

Of course, as with all things, you get out what you put in with social media. It is very easy to be sucked into the worlds of Facebook or Twitter and emerge bleary eyed hours later, realising that you haven’t done much of value for your site. So, how to avoid falling into the black hole of time wasting? Have a plan!

Your social media attack plan should work towards the aims you have for your blog. Keeping in mind your aims will help you focus as you dive into forums or the blogoverse, as well as help you in developing different tactics to hit those aims. To this end, social media can be used for three purposes:

• Marketing
• Socialising
• Learning

Your plan should mix and match the three on the various platforms to maximise your time and effort.  For example, Twitter could be used to promote your newest article, LinkedIn can be used to find and connect with similar companies or experts, whilst forums can be a veritable storehouse of how-tos, help and advice. Bearing in mind the variety of social media sites out there and the multitude of different ways to use them, your action plan should definitely not only be focused on one site. You also need to make sure not to spread yourself thin trying to be active on ALL the sites. This is nigh on impossible and will only lead to burnout.

For your plan to work you need to have an allotted amount of time each day for your social media management strategy (and it does need to be every day, the online world evolves very quickly).  Setting aside this time, keeping in mind your aims for each of your social media sites, lets you work through your strategy quickly and efficiently, and makes for a very productive hour or two.

When used correctly and responsibly, social media has so many opportunities and advantages specially for language professionals; I met a large number of professionals offering translation services in UK that took advantage of Social Media to promote themselves

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Most importantly, it connects you to a wider audience with opinions, knowledge and stories waiting to be shared, all of which can be useful to you and your website. Whether you use the available information to learn more about your craft or to inspire a whole series of articles, it’s all up to you.