Last weekend, somebody asked me if I were to pick the one “secret sauce” ingredient to a successful social media presence – what would it be? The answer to that is very easy…

The “secret sauce” is consistency with a capital C!

You thought it was going to be some top secret, new social media platform or something, didn’t you?  The fact is without consistency no social media plan can work, period.

Think about it – if we are supposed to be using social media as a platform to build relationships and build community how can we do that without consistency?

I read an article on smallbusiness.aol.com that said that 70% of small businesses use some form of social media!  The bad news is only 36% are updating the sites more than once a week.

If you meet some great guy or girl that you wanted to build a relationship with you wouldn’t just talk to them once a week. You would be reaching out to connect with them on a daily basis – for some of you it might be on an hourly basis (but then we probably need to have a discussion about spamming.)

If you are out there thinking OK great I need to be consistent but don’t even know what to do then I feel your pain. I felt the same way for a while. When I was trying to figure these things out, I wasn’t sure what I was doing.  But, I was doing something…. Sometimes, even if we are doing the wrong thing, it is just good that we are doing something.

We are trying to build what they call TOMA – top of mind awareness. We want people to start to recognize our name – we want them to start to associate our name with certain things out there – our goal is to be seen as an expert in our field and the more people see our name and can associate it with a certain topic the more TOMA we build.

Then, one day,  someone tells them they need to know more about list building and TOMA kicks in and without even realizing it they are recommending someone they have been seeing on social media who talks a lot about that subject.

It’s important to remember that people give authority and expert status to those who claim it through writing books and blog posts, or even just talking about the topic on social media.  Every teleseminar you  promote, every blog post you write and every question you answer is another step on the ladder toward becoming an expert.  Note that you don't have to be at the top of the ladder to be an expert – you just need to know enough to get people to the next step in the process.

Where does all this come from – Consistency.

So,  what is considered “consistent” in the social media world.  Consistency means:

• Updating your fan page daily
• Liking and sharing other people's posts daily
• Making new connections
• Tweeting 8-10 times  a day
• Interacting on You Tube – adding new videos – blogging 3-5 times a week (or even daily)

and more…

Are you feeling overwhelmed because all of this seems to be a huge time investment?

Let me tell you 2 things – First, that in the beginning it is very time consuming and you might want to look at the possibility of outsourcing. Second, after a while when you have automated a lot of this you can show up on social media for 30 minutes to an hour each day and accomplish what takes you hours in the beginning. I know, because that is exactly what I have done.

I have systems and strategies in place that make it appear that I am always on social media – as a matter of fact people are constantly saying to me “Man, Michele your everywhere” and when they do I do a little happy dance inside because it means my strategies and systems are working.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing some of these strategies with you on this blog, and through some video lessons.  In the meanwhile, what are your favorite social media systems?