In yesterday’s post we looked at a daily routine for you to use on LinkedIn. In this post we are still continuing our theme of how to save time with business development, and we are still looking at ways of doing this with social media. One of the biggest barriers I hear lawyers, accountants and consultants voice about social media is feeling like they don’t have anything meaningful to say on social media. The time it can take to search and find, or think about good things to say, can often be overwhelming and a barrier to using social media effectively (or at all).  In this post, I will be giving you 5 ideas on how to always have something (meaningful) to say on social media.

1. Decide on what you will say and what you wouldn’t say upfront

It can often make it easier to have a discussion with your team on what is appropriate or not appropriate to say on social media. When people know the ‘rules of the game’ it can make it much easier to unblock the writer’s block. Very often, within the legal community, there is a perception that ‘chit-chatting’ on social media, particularly Twitter, is a bad thing to do, as it makes you seem boring. Actually, in real life, this chit-chatting is something that we do all the time, and it oils the wheels of any relationship. If you give yourself permission to chit-chat and what you will or wouldn’t chit-chat about, it makes it much easier to find you’ve got something to say. 

2. Take the pressure off yourself to be perfect, witty or insightful

I strongly believe that lawyers, similar to many professionals, feel that as social media is such a public environment that they have to have their game face on at all times. There is a pressure to be seen to be the embodiment of a perfect lawyer, i.e. insightful, sharp and sometimes a little witty. (Well, maybe not the witty bit!) Actually, the only person you have to be on social media is yourself. Yes, you. You need to show up as the person that your potential clients, clients and intermediaries want to work with. When you give yourself permission to be yourself, it suddenly becomes much easier to say something.

3. Have a store of useful websites, interesting people on Twitter and tweet streams

There are days when even the most talkative people on Twitter feel as if they don’t have anything to say. (Yes, even me!) Regardless of whether you have writer’s block or not, it’s always useful to have a source of inspiration for social media. This could be:

  • a content plan, which guides you what to write, tweet and link to
  • an RSS reader filled with feeds from blogs and news sites that inspire you to write or comment or tweet links
  • a list on twitter with people who make it easy to chat to them, or comment on their content
  • a bookmarked list of blogs or website with good content for you to share

4. Use buffer app

I will often scan my key twitter lists a couple of times a day and see interesting content being shared. Sometimes I will retweet the interesting stuff there and then. Other times I will ‘favourite’ it. Then once a week, I will go through my favourites and put the tweets into a ‘buffer‘. This great piece of software then shares my interesting content across the week at times when my twitter followers are normally around. This takes the pressure of me always ‘having to be there’, and always having to have something interesting to say. In fact, if you so wish, using buffer really makes it easy just to go into twitter once a day for 5 mins or so.

5. Have a list of stock phrases and questions

One of my clients actually scheduled a list of questions in the morning that he would ask his followers. Whilst, I’m not suggesting doing this, how about having a list of standard questions that you will pick from to ask your followers and encourage engagement with them? 

We have a great course in our subscriber-only site Progress to Partner  called How to Make the Time for Business Development. It takes about 2-hours to work through and create a daily business development habit that you can stick to.