But with our expanded capacity for connecting with others, we also find ourselves with an information overload. Sometimes there is just too much coming at us all at once, and we can get overwhelmed. We’ve all tried different ways to organise both our incoming and outgoing data. When it comes to organising our social media, integration and automation seemed like “the” solution, but we find ourselves yet again in an information overload situation. There are just so many different options on the market that we often find ourselves asking, “Isn’t there one RIGHT way of delivering and filtering through my social media information?”

In my work, I help business owners (primarily authors and holistic professionals) set up their social media integration and automation, and train them how to use it. But the induction process into the world of Twitter, Facebook and the like can often shake up many emotions and challenge many beliefs. Some people who are new to social media might have a pre-conceived idea that automation takes the “social” out of social media, and therefore eschew the convenience automation has to offer. These people end up working harder rather than smarter, and risk burning out on social media before they reap the rewards. Others, who don’t really like the idea of social media at all, but see it as a “necessary evil”, want to automate everything and don’t want to bother connecting with their audience. As a result, these kinds of people frequently become convinced that the lack of response they are receiving from their audience means, “Twitter (or whatever) is simply a waste of time!”

Yes, I’ve heard it all before.

Regardless of whether you recognise yourself as being similar to one of these two personality types, or you are already an enthusiastic social media devotee, let me assure you, social media can have a massive impact upon the success of your business. My own business was utterly built upon it! But in order to make it work “smart” for you, and to ensure you receive all the benefits it has to offer, you need to understand that BOTH automation AND interpersonal connection are EQUALLY important to running an efficient and effective social media platform because:

Automation is needed to deliver your content.

Interaction is needed to build relationships.

Learning the balance between these two can be a steep learning curve for many of my new clients. As demonstrated in the previous examples, those that depend upon one and fail to implement the other tend not to reap the results they seek.

But what makes the learning curve even more challenging is that to stay on top of things, you need to get used to changing your strategies all the time. This is because the social network platforms themselves (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, etc) are always in a state of evolution, and the plethora of third-party applications available to support these platforms are also always in a state of continual change.

The plain truth about social media:

Sometimes clients come to me expecting to learn the definitive system for social media. And while I tend to do things in a systematic way for myself, the truth is: there is NO magic “one size fits all” way to “do” social media. Your situation is not the same as mine. Your business is not the same. Your communication style is not the same. Your audience is not the same. Sure, there will be many similarities, but if ANYONE out their claims to be a guru, and tells you they have “the” one-stop solution for your needs, you’d be pretty safe to bet it’s a scam. Don’t spend your money on such claims (I’ve lost more than a few quid on such false promises back when I was a newbie).

But the fact that there are so many variables is not the only reason why there is no end-all magic bullet for social media. It is also because all the social media tools out there are all continuously changing, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. And as they change they create a butterfly effect upon each other. So you really have resign yourself to the fact that social media is a fluid system, and that there will be a continual process of learning involved. Even a Rubic Cube is easier to figure out, because the cube is a stable system that doesn’t change.

But the good news is, the more you know, the easier it is to adapt to this ever-flowing sea of change. For that reason, I thought it would be a good idea to write an eBook, going through some of the currently most popular social media tools for distributing your content:

Buy Kindle edition on Amazon US/Canada for only $2.99

Buy Kindle edition on Amazon UK for only £1.98

In Social Media on Autopilot: Nice, Necessary or Nightmare? [Kindle edition], I bring you 5 details product reviews intended for business owners on five of today’s most popular social media applications: Ping, TweetDeck, Twaitter, HootSuite and Tweet Adder. Each product is evaluated on virtually every feature it offers, and ranked in terms of its usefulness, reliability, automation capabilities, interaction capability and mobility.

Accessible reading even for the “newbie”, this report and help you find out how the pros use Twitter, Facebook and other social networks without selling their souls or spending every waking hour at their computer. At the end of this report, you will also find some useful bonus materials covering options for integrating your media, and some ideas for using social media apps on your mobile phone.

I have helped dozens of authors and online business owners reach the top of their field through social media. Nearly all my learning has come the “hard way” by spending countless hours at my desk, trying to find products and figure out what was best. For a mere $2.99, this detailed report (at 15,770 words, it would have been about 50 pages if I had printed it in paperback format) you save yourself months of research and trial and error.

There are even a few free gifts for you at the back of the eBook.

I hope you find this booklet useful. If you do, please do come back and leave a comment below (or better yet, post it on Amazon!). Also, if you have any suggestions for eBooks you would like me to write, please let me know that too in the comments below. That would be REALLY helpful to me!

And do please subscribe to the Spirit Authors blog for more info and insight into the world of writing, publishing and book promotions.

Enjoy going on autopilot!

Lynn’s other books:

International #1 Bestseller in Business Ethics, Marketing and Communication (Dec 2011)

• The 7 Graces of Marketing: how to heal humanity and the planet by changing the way we sell (PAPERBACK)
• The 7 Graces of Marketing: how to heal humanity and the planet by changing the way we sell (KINDLE)

Spirituality Bestseller (2009):

The Garden of the Soul: lessons from four flowers that unearth the Self (2009)

To contact Lynn for coaching, campaign management or media appearances, please fill in the form at http://spiritauthors.com/contact.

Sample Vison Board from Blastation

This week I took this cutting edge new sofware programme (developed by Allison Maslan) for a spin. After reading this review (I give you screen shots of the programme and describe the features pretty fully), take Blastation for a test drive yourself on a FREE 30-day trial http://ow.ly/KMx.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

About a year ago, I attended a course with Patrick Ryan called “Awakened Wisdom”. On that course, I set many goals for myself to achieve over the next 2 years and beyond. Now, I know that I am absolutely USELESS when it comes to keeping paper documents, so I wanted to make some sort of computer-based tracking system for myself to create my 2-year targets and then break them down into smaller chunks (monthly, weekly, daily). I used an Excel spreadsheet and put all kinds of pretty colours on it. I used a different colour for each time frame: one for “Life Dream” and one for the year, month, week and day. I called it my “15-minute focus” because I didn’t want to spend gobs of time on it every day, or I wouldn’t get any work done. Instead, I wanted to use it as a way to focus my vision on the bigger picture every day, and keep my perspective on how my daily activities were working towards that goal. Here’s a screen shot of what it looked like almost exactly 1 year ago (hahah… notice that my “Life Dream” last Christmas was that my book The Garden of the Soul sold 30 million copies… I’m still working on that one!):

Well, I have to say, it did work pretty well and kept me on target for a while. If I look back at it now, most of the things I had set out to do were all pretty much achieved, and most of those things that weren’t achieved were replaced with stuff that was even better. I found this method so useful that I even shared it with several of my coaching clients, who liked it very much.

But after a couple of months, it started to get a bit of clumsy and I tended not to use it as much as I did when I first made it. There were too many words, too much scrolling up and down, no real way to “see” visually what I had achieved. I found it took me a lot longer than 15 minutes a day, because of the way it was laid out, and it didn’t really replace my need to use a daily diary quite separately from this (which I developed on yet another spreadsheet). Sometimes I found myself forgetting where I had written things down because I needed so many different places to write them!

But lo’ and behold, only a few months ago, a woman named Allison Maslan came into my life, asking me to coach her around creating a marketing campaign for her upcoming book Blast Off!. Well, of course I was really pleased to meet such a wonderful new client, and get to work on such a fun book campaign, but the bonus surprise for me was when she showed me Blastation – an online software programme she had designed for exactly the same purpose as my 15-Minute Focus spreadsheet…

But seeing them side-by-side was like comparing an old 78 rpm gramophone to a digital surround-sound system. Blastation was everything I had wanted my spreadsheet to be, but it did it all faster, prettier and more visually. It overcame every single one of the drawbacks of my home-made goals-setting spreadsheet had. Heck, it even used a similar colour scheme as I had chosen for my 15-Minute Focus, only a lot bolder and more eye-catching. I had to laugh when I saw that. It was just too perfect.

Blastation gives you 6 major areas of life in which to set goals: career, relationships, wealth, spiritual life, health and personal fulfilment (which includes FUN!).

For each of these areas, you set your “Big Picture Vision”, your “mile steps” and then your “mini-feats.” That’s very similar to the way I had my system laid out, only more streamlined. Then, it also gives you a “sunup script” which sort of reminds me of the “morning pages” Julia Cameron uses in The Artist’s Way (which I use with a lot of my clients). It also has “rocket words” which are basically your self-pep talk (or affirmations) for the day. It allows you to upload pictures, so it’s not all words, words, words.

AND do you know what? It even has a calendar that you can integrate with Outlook. I couldn’t believe it when I saw this.

But the thing I really, really liked was the “Life-o-Meter”. It’s like a petrol gauge that shows you how much you are living up to your goals. Every time you achieve a goal on time it sends you up the gauge towards 100%. Pretty cool, yes?

It also comes with excellent tutorials and guidance on how to use it effectively. Frankly, I’m going to recommend Blastation to my clients because it really is a great way to set goals, and stay motivated as you move towards them. And for coaches, it’s a great way for you to monitor your clients’ progress.

I rarely (if ever) talk about online coaching products, but this particular one just felt so fun and so USEFUL, I really wanted to review it and let people take it for a spin. Allison offers a 30-day free trial of the software, so you can see for yourself whether you think it could help you move closer to your life dreams.

And I do think a few months’ subscription would also make a really unique Christmas gift. Check out Blastation HERE.

My rating?  5-stars for:

• usefulness
• easy-of-use
• aesthetic appearance
• originality
• and FUN!

Like this article? Share it with others!