Social Networking For The Busy

C.H.I.P.s is in the process of restructuring our community. We are working on a plan to improve our website, blog, and events. We should be up and running again by the beginning of November, so until then we'll be republishing some of our most popular posts:


A couple weeks ago, I published a guest post by Mark Bradford of ChirpUp.com titled Attention Marketers: You Can't Afford Not Blog . The post goes along with conversations I've had with other home interior professionals at past CHIPs events : creating a name for yourself, establishing yourself as an expert in your field, via blogging. I believe strongly that most people in preparation to begin a project will jump on the information highway to do research on what should be done and who is best suited to do the job. Not only does being active on Twitter, Facebook, and a blog establish you as "in the know", it also helps with search engine optimization.

I am surprised at the number of business owners I know that do not engage in this new marketing medium. Most of them will tell me that they simply do not have the time. This is what I've done to jump over the hurdle of time when it comes to social networking.

Scheduling Blog Posts.

First of all, for the CHIPs blog, I am open to guest-bloggers. I welcome others to submit posts that fall in line with the purpose of CHIPs to provide business ideas and strategies to other business owners (particularly those in the home improvement/home interior industry). Not only does this help me promote others, it also provides me with a couple of posts a week I don't need to worry about. So when I have some time ( admittedly at night usually ) , I schedule my posts on Blogger. This means I can type up as many posts as I want and schedule them to be published later in the week. It's real simple to do on Blogger, just setting the publish time and date under "Post Options". To read about scheduling posts on Wordpress, see Chirpup.com's blog post about it.

Scheduling Twitter Updates.

I love being a twit, but there are times I just can't get in front of the laptop. Tweetlater helps out tremendously. Using Tweetlater, I can take 15 minutes typing in Twitter updates for the following day, directing others to the blog, promoting events and other CHIPs members. During the day when I have a couple of minutes, I take out my phone, tweet, & respond to other's tweets - so that there's a personal touch as well. Tweetlater also gives you the opportunity to automatically follow those who follow you and send them an automatic DM.