Social media continued its rapid growth in 2011. Many freelance writers are active users of social media, me included. In 2011 I focused on this blog, Twitter, and Linkedin, with some attention to Google+.
2011 Social Media Statistics Infographic
Mat Siltala over at Dream Systems Media made a very cool infographic from data presented over at AdAge. (The graphic is copyrighted by Mat and reproduced with permission.) This post continues below the graphic…
My Social Media Strategy in 2011
I placed a lot of emphasis on developing good relationships on Twitter with freelance writers, other types of writers, and other business people. I’ve been quite active there engaging in conversations and sharing posts and other important information from quality people.
I also put a lot of effort into LinkedIn and it’s paid off with multiple paid projects. You can read my post about why freelance writers must be on LinkedIn for all the details.
Finally, I joined Google+, but I’ve only been modestly active there.
My Social Media Strategy in 2012
I’ll continue my efforts with Twitter and LinkedIn, and I’ll likely finally put Productive Writers on Facebook. I’m also considering learning more about Google+ and evaluating its usefulness for possible increased emphasis.
Connect With Me on LinkedIn and Twitter
The Twitter and Google+ buttons are near the top of the sidebar, and here are those links again:
And here’s the URL of my LinkedIn profile:
See John Soares’s LinkedIn profile
If you have an ethical business and your profile is filled out, I’ll likely follow/circle you on Twitter and Google+.
I’m more particular about LinkedIn. Please send a personalized connection request and explain how you know me and what we have in common.
Your Take
How active are you on social media and which have you found most beneficial? How important is it to your freelance writing or other business? Your personal life? What are your social media plans for 2012?
I’ve started the year by increasing my interaction on Google+, John, because I like the network and because Google is placing more emphasis on it. I’m not sure users at large have got there yet, but I’m in no rush. I’m continuing to be active on Twitter, and am trying to do more on LinkedIn. I don’t much like Facebook, though I have a page there, but I’m feeding it with stuff from the other places where I’m more active. I wouldn’t call my approach so much a strategy as an experiment – we’ll see how it goes.
Yes, Google has just started integrating Google+ into its search results, which has given me a kick in the pants for that network.
I just looked at your Google+ profile and I see you’ve got some good interaction there. My plan is to find a few quality people to model — I think you’ll be one of them — and then slowly increase my participation.
And thanks for the +1!
Thanks for including me in that group, John. When you’ve got your circle together, feel free to share as I’m always happy to find quality people to interact with. The more I share, the more interaction I get – with just a small boost in the first couple of weeks of January, I’m already seeing the results in more activity on my profile.
I did share this post on Google+ this morning, several hours ago, and I shared it with everyone in my circles, including you.
Not sure how easy it is to see what everyone posts; I still have to go in and play with settings a bit.
Hi John: My strategy is similar to yours (except for Facebook). LinkedIn has been my #1 since I started freelancing, which you can tell by all my posts about them. When I wrote a 2-part article about LinkedIn for Peter Bowerman’s newsletter, I figured out 60% of my clients started with some kind of connection to LinkedIn (some were re-connecting with people I worked with in the past). I love it.
I’ve been on Twitter for a while, but not as effective as I could be. I plan on refining my Twitter use, bumping up my LinkedIn’s company page with future products and probably setting up a Google+ page and getting reactive there.
Looking forward to seeing you around the SM world, John. 🙂
I got on LinkedIn about 18 months ago or so, but initially didn’t put much effort into it outside of putting up a basic profile and making a few dozen connections.
And then an editor from a big company contacted me through LinkedIn to talk about potential projects. That gave me the incentive to maximize my profile, get recommendations, and make LinkedIn a priority.
Hootsuite has really helped me manage Twitter. It’s free and it allows me to monitor my important lists of Twitter people and also schedule tweeets.
I use Hootsuite as well, John, and really like it. I just need to get more strategic about Twitter to maximize my productivity. My goal this year is being more strategic about social media in general, which is why I found this such a welcome post.
I totally agree about the importance of having a good Twitter strategy. I’ve focused primarily on building up a substantial number of quality followers and also on connecting with quality people.
John, I’m still learning G+ myself, so I’m curious if there was a reason that you shared the link to this post to a limited stream rather than the public.
If I’m understanding the new Personal results on Google searches, the only G+ info that will show up there is stuff that was shared with you/your G+ login/gmail account.
Again, IF I’m understanding correctly, G+ info shared with the public SHOULD have a better chance of appearing in the Personal search results. Right?
Sherry, I’m quite a noob at Google+. I just Googled how to make my posts public and, yes, you are absolutely right. I was not even aware of the “public” sharing option and what it meant. It wasn’t obvious to me when I was sharing a link. I just saw the options to choose which circles to share with.
And for those of you who don’t know how to share with the public, you need to click the “Add more people” when you’re ready to share, and then select “Public.”
Whoa! Thank you so much for posting. To me, this all means the game is only just getting off the ground. I do not know about any specific brand or medium, but eventually there will be billions!
Geeze John, that infographic is a masters degree of info… will take awhile to get through it.
Didn’t know google was including+ in its search results… more time on +.
I tweet because I like it. I’ve got auto posts on fb and linkedin and I participate in some linkedin groups… need to find groups that are likely to result in work, not whines about writing.
Although I keep gentle track of new social media my real reaction is ‘on no!’
Thanks for this.
Anne, I have a similar reaction to new social media sites; I wonder if it’s something that will actually be important for my business or will instead be a big waste of time.
I have put a bit of effort into Google+, primarily making connections with good people. I haven’t gotten involved with many of those other sites, like Pinterest for example. I do have a Quora account, but I do nothing with it.
I’ll have to be on g+, my organic traffic has been dropping daily since they turned on the profile integration.
I don’t do anything with Quora or Pinterest either.
Yeah, it looks like Google is really pushing Google+; I’m seeing some backlash, but we’ll have to see how it finally shakes out.
Interesting infographics and comments. As a former recruiter, I know about LinkedIn but have not really leveraged it for my writing business….which has to change. I do have a Facebook page for my blog and use it quite a bit, and the same with Twitter. One social media outlet that I think is going to grow a lot this year is YouTube…but it’s not really my “cup of tea”– I prefer reading and writing to making or watching videos– so I’m not sure how to handle that.
Denise, YouTube is also on my radar. I’ve set up an account, but I’ve yet to start shooting any videos — at least vids directly related to writing. I do have some vids I shot in the Southwest and other beautiful outdoors places, but they’re still languishing on my hard drive.
Very interesting inforgraphs.Its true 2011 was all about social media.People made fantastic use of it and earned some great stuff.
Its true that the trend will grow this year as well.I can say the number of Google Plus and Facebook users will surely increase.
Google+ has had strong growth recently. I don’t think it will ever truly challenge Facebook for #1, but I do think it has a high probability of staying significant.
E-commerce is fast growing in today’s generation and I believe it is very important to understand the channels that businesses are using for their products. The use of social media is very helpful indeed. But problem with these social media is their life span. YouTube is lucky enough to stay this long, but how about Facebook and Twitter? Will they die out like Friendster or MySpace too?
Gordon
Social media is going to get nothing but bigger in the years to come in terms of marketing and promoting your business and blogs. If you’re not in the game yet, you better get in it now! Google+ was a little shaky at the start, but I have started to get used to it and I think it’s going to outshine Facebook sooner than later.