I get this question often from the people I coach. And the answer is…

YES! You do. But only if you want to be successful in your business. If you’re not in business and you don’t care about connecting the new way (I didn’t say the better way), then you can ignore it completely.

BUT, if you really want to make the difference you say you want to make in the financial education niche or industry (and that’s what it is…an industry), you have to have a presence in the most used social media sites. One of the things that we discuss in our financial education teacher trainings is how important it is there days to learn, and do, the social networking thing.

Social Media Master

And by social networking I mean…

Facebook
Twitter
Youtube
Myspace (though not so much)
and a zillion more but these are the required ones.

and LinkedIn.com

Yes, you may hate them and not see the point but let me tell you, if you trust me at all, you have to be visible on these sites if you’re going to be really successful.

But about LinkedIn.com. It’s different than the others I mentioned because it’s the place you go to stand apart from the crowd professionally. If you haven’t already created a place for yourself on Linkedin.com, I invite you to do so right this minute. It doesn’t take that much time to get your free account set up and start making a few connections.

And then, while you’re add it, add me to your soon growing list of connections. I’m here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/elisabethdonati

The thing to remember about social media networking is that it doesn’t REPLACE other kinds of networking…it is something you do in addition to going out and meeting people.

How I do social media

Well, I don’t do it scheduled YET but I’m about to. Each week I just take a few hours to log onto my sites, post new stuff, ask questions and more. I’m learning new strategies all of the time.

What I’m about to do is take 30 minutes each morning and do it and I’ve heard that people log on to their social media sites during and right after lunch the most often so that’s probably the best time to do your posting so that you get maximum exposure. That being said, I should probably schedule it for 10 am my time (PST).

So, just take a few hours and get your profiles set up. Use the same photo. Write what you do, your bio, etc. once and use it consistently on all of the sites. I keep all my wordings in one database file (I use Filemaker) so I just look up what I need, copy and paste it into a new profile. This makes adding new social media sites a breeze because you’re not retyping information you’ve already typed a few times. Do it once and then just keep improving it.

OK, get out there and do it. You’ll be glad you did!