Social media is not very difficult at all, but it does not happen overnight. You may have a few false starts. You might rename your site, often, until you find the right fit. It is not anything that someone can teach you in a classroom setting, you just jump right in.
I have often been asked how I managed to get so many people on Twitter. I’ve been on Twitter for 2 years and ten months. It took about a month just to get 100 followers. Since then the progress has been rather exponential. I only use one tool on Twitter; Just Unfollow. I do not post to the top trends, I do not use team followback, or any other team, I simply follow those that follow me, and unfollow those that unfollow me, it is that simple. I am a bit shy of 6,000 followers at the moment.
If you put out good content, if you promote work you see on Twitter that you believe in, if you are consistent with what you promote on Twitter people will follow you. I cannot tell you a thing about Facebook. That platform has never worked for me, it works for other people, but not for me. Do not ask me anything about Tumblr; works for other people, but not for me. You do not have to master multiple platforms, just find those that work well for you, and work that one platform really, really, well, and forget about the rest.
I still use Blogger. I started off on WordPress, but Blogger provided ad revenue I was not getting on WordPress. Since then they have changed their policies, and you can host ads if you have a registered domain, but I am already invested in Blogger there is no reason for me to go back to WordPress. I put it out there on Blogger, and I am using two other tools to notify Twitter automatically. Ping.fm is a pretty good tool that will notify all of your networks automatically, from your RSS feed. Learn where the RSS feed to your blog is; your platform will automatically notify Google, but it will not automatically notify Twitter or Facebook. That is where third party ping services come in.
When I write an article, three posts go out on Twitter. The rest I put out myself. One thing to keep in mind about Twitter is that you can promote the same content as much as you want but you cannot put out the exact same tweet, two times in a row. So you may have to manipulate the text that goes out; use bit.ly or tinyurl.com, mix it up a bit so that you are cutting and pasting the same url. You can actually log into bit.ly through Twitter or Facebook, which helps tremendously. Twitter Feed is also a great app that I use.
You cannot rely on yourself to automatically post to Twitter once your articles go out. That is what these other tools are for. A lot of people do not want a lot of people in their feed. You have to stop looking at the people that follow you as friends, and look at them as potential customers. If you have 100 followers, and only 2% of your followers ever click on an ad, or retweet your post, you are only reaching 2 people. If you have 6,000 followers you are reaching 120 people. People think that all of their followers are on their team, but in all actuality, the majority of their followers are ignoring their messages. People want the messages in their stream, but the majority of the people that subscribe to that feed are going to ignore what goes out. It is like having the television set on in the other room, for comfort, but not actually watching the program.
When I put out an article, 20 people click on it, usually. Sometimes it takes a while, but for the most part, I can expect to get 20 hits if the article is any good. This is without anyone retweeting it. So out of 6,000 followers, only 20 are responding. So if you keep a small timeline, because you do not want any noise, you are missing the point of the timeline, unless your sole purpose in social media is to network with other people. I want 50,000 followers on Twitter. I would like to get around 150 clicks on an article when they go out. It is not the quality of the work that is the issue, it is the confines of the reach of my social network.
There are other avenues, but those avenues cost money, and they cost time. I could be spending that time and money writing articles, promoting great artists, and distributing great ideas. So do not lose your mind trying to master social media. There is always room for improvement. Just keep doing whatever it is that you are doing. Master your craft. The marketing and social media efforts will come on their own. Keep an open mind, and be pleasant, and receptive, to your followers concerns when they actually do speak to you.