Creating systems for your business can be a real life saver in the long run. Even better when you have a system or procedure to follow because you do not have to remember all the steps, you wrote them down. I was recently challenged as to how I was going to provide written social marketing information to participants in a teleseminar. I personally love it when teachers and mentors provide a written guide to an audio program.

I learn better when there is also written material to follow along, Do You? It has something to do with the fact that we are receiving the information using two different senses; listening and reading.

Whether it be a live teaching or an audio CD I have found that my customers and clients learn more and retain the knowledge even better. I had been stressing about something this week and low and behold I found it in my notes, if only I had been smart enough to go to the notes first, because I had written it down.

Three benefits of having written procedures in place for your social media marketing…

1) You don’t have to remember how to do everything. I am sure you will agree that it is very frustrating to go and do something you have not done in a while and not remember all the steps. You know you did this before you simply cannot remember all the details. From that frustrating experience I decided to create index cards on how to do specific actions. Outline the steps and even in some cases what buttons to push and in what order.

2) Reduce your own stress. When you have things written down and stored away in a safe place you don’t have to remember! This little habit all by itself can really reduce the stress. You know you have to get something done, you haven’t done it for a while but you’re not concerned about it because you know that the directions are within your easy grasp. One of the more frustrating things about social media is that there is so much to learn and sometimes remembering it all is not easy.

3) You can easily outsource the task to someone else. When you are ready to have other people take care of your social media marketing you have great directions all ready to go. One of the biggest challenges with outsourcing is the initial training period and with your “notes to self” you are already half way there. OR you can take all of your notes and create an eBook or a workbook.

For this guide, we will take an example of a stock blog. The blog talks about investing in stock. The purpose of this guide is to build traffic for your site. This guide will require no money. The strategy is divided into two parts, daily and weekly strategy.

DAILY strategy: (Total 1 hour 15 minutes)

• Create a post about daily stock market activities. Which stock is on the move, and why is it. (15 minutes)
• Find 3 forums which talks about stock (your niche). You can search at Google for “stock forum”. The forum must be popular and have lots of activity. Register into the forum and create attractive signature. You can use color and bold for your signature. Post five post for each forum. Post in popular thread and be the first to reply post. (15 minutes per forum. Total 45 minutes)
• When looking at the forum, take a note of other people blog and interesting topics. Visit one blog from your blog list. If you have 7 blogs on your list, you can visit them all in 7 days, a week. If you have 14 blogs on your list, you will visit them all in 14 days, two week. Read their blog, take a note of interesting topics, and comment on their blog. (15 minutes)

WEEKLY strategy: (Total 1 hour 5 minutes)

• Remember that we have taken note of interesting topics when visiting forums and other people blogs. Do some research on Google about the topic. For example, in recent weeks stocks around the world went down sharply. You can do some research why this happen. Write an article of 500 words or more on the topic. Post the article on your blog. (45 minutes)
• Submit your article to Social Bookmarking Sites like digg.com and del.icio.us. (5 minutes)
• Post your article at your top 3 forums of your choice. (5 minutes)
• Submit your article to EzineArticles.com or articlecity.com or any website that will accept your article. (15 minutes)
• Check your blog’s traffic statistic. You can see your progress and plan a strategy based on your traffic statistic. If one forum does not gives you enough traffic, you might want to change another forum.