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It takes foresight and strategy to go from a casual, personal user of social media to using it to promote your professional life – whatever that may be. But I think, for those of us in the media professions, social media strategies have become essential.
I’ve already implied my somewhat quizzical relationship with online self-promotion through social media. Of course, those in it for the money have no time for such trivial squeamishness. (See Strategy Roundtable: How To Use Twitter For Lead Generation.)

However, you can glean good tips from the marketing fraternity, if you think laterally about how to apply them to your sitch. For example, some tips from Mashable here – self evident, perhaps, but the secret is in the implementation.

Some of my own tips

• Develop a ‘professional practice’ that happens in, through, social media. Something that won’t chew up all my time, but something that reminds your circles what you do. You never know, perhaps some of it will go viral. I do little cartoons.
• Self-impose a schedule. I have made mondays into ‘social media mondays’. Every monday I publish 1 cartoon (disseminated to flickr, twitter, FB, Google+ and my blog). Make yourself feel guilty if you miss the schedule (but not for too long)
• Every monday I also publish several blog posts. These are a mixutre of reviews of stuff I’ve found online and original thoughts. All my blog posts either have an image or embedded video
• Develop a voice. [yah yah toodle-e-doo]
• Lastly – stick with it! when all the world is agin’ ye, go forth et propagate (digitally speaking)

A summary infographic, ‘a short history of social media‘ by Morrison & Foerster.

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