Are you trying to build a brand, interact with clients, or reach out to new prospects? It isn’t really about how many new friends or followers or readers you have. You have to establish reasonable, meaningful goals. If there is absolutely no reason for you to be on social media during the day, then you shouldn’t even log in to it, unless it’s your lunch hour, or you’ve been given permission to check in on certain sites on your off time. If you have goals, such as if you are in Sales, you need to establish “What is this going to mean for me?” Maybe it means you have the goal of establishing one new lead per week. Perhaps you are trying to generate awareness and your goal could be, “I’m going to post industry-related content once a day.” You might want to extend your brand and your goal would be, “I want to be the online resource for customers and prospects” and determine how to reach out to people. These are just examples, but you need to know what this means to you.

2. Choose a few key targets that make sense to you.

Once you have your goal established, you can go out and choose a few key targets that make sense to you. One of my favorites is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great site that allows you to create a professional profile for the purpose of making business contacts online. Most users see this site as a relatively no-nonsense one. It is a great resource for building professional relationships and reaching out to people you need to meet virtually to assist you in your work. I have 1000+ contacts currently, all of whom I have either met, networked with, done business with or would be willing to refer to others. When you first look at LinkedIn, you’ll see it has your picture, any status updates you have inputted, your current job, your past job, your education, your recommendations and your websites. You can go through and see using mine as an example at www.linkedin.com/in/laurastack. You can summarize your background and experience and explain your specialties. What’s powerful about LinkedIn is how it relates to other types of social media that you employ, such as blogs.