In fact, swatching is what separates novice knitters from advanced knitters. Those who hate swatching will always stay with hats and scarves – things that don’t require exact measurements. Sometimes, they’ll even attempt a garment without swatching and end up with clothing that’s never quite right. Advanced knitters know that swatching is a crucial step because even though it’s dreaded, it saves a lot of time down the road and ensures that all the hard work and time spent knitting the garment will result in a wardrobe addition that fits perfectly.

Building your social media strategy is like swatching: everyone hates it, but it has to be done. Big companies hire folks to create strategy for them but as a small business or solopreneur, it’s up to you to create your own strategy. You can’t just jump right in. To get results, you need a plan. Otherwise, you’re creating minutiae with ill-fitting results.

Last week, I taught a social media 101 class to a group of real estate agents. Real estate agents are good at relationships, so social media is a space they should be participating in. But instead of talking about how to set up a Facebook account or the dos and don’ts of tweeting, we talked about strategy. Instead of talking about how, we talked about what and why.

If you are thinking about using social media to promote your business or services, start with what and why.

What do I hope to accomplish with social media? What ways can I provide value in the social media space? What are others currently saying about my business or my industry? Why is it important that my business participate in that conversation?

It’s not the end-all, be-all to social media strategy, but it’s a start.

If you’re new to my blog and came here from the #ILM tweetup, welcome!

I am @lisaashby on twitter and have been tweeting since early 2008.

(Hi, Lisa.)

At first, I didn’t quite get twitter. But once I started meeting other people through twitter, it became a fun thing for me to do. I quickly became interested in the marketing aspects of twitter and started experimenting with bringing traffic from twitter to my personal blog. Today, I know that the connections I made on twitter helped to build a small community on my personal blog.

I discovered the power of celebrity when Richard from Akira Media retweeted a post about a Pee Wee Herman stencil craft I did. Richard’s tweet was then retweeted by Pee Wee Herman and the traffic to my site went up 100x that day alone. My subscriber count doubled and the traffic to my blog has increased significantly since then. The “Pee Wee page” as I call it continues to be one of the top 5 content pages on my site each month.

In June, my husband and I started Rebound, a podcast about becoming debt-free following Dave Ramsey’s baby steps. I instantly started promoting the podcast on twitter and it has been the most successful campaign thus far. We have connected with listeners through twitter and our Facebook page, and our little podcast is growing exponentially. We have had 18,000+ downloads since June, 8,000 of which came in January 2010 alone.

To ensure success, I focused on quality followers instead of quantity followers. I follow people that are passionate about the things I do – crafting, finances, marketing and entrepreneurship. I also engaged my core group as it started to emerge and continue to engage them on a regular basis. These are the people that believe in what I do and cheer me on, and I don’t take it for granted. I thank them for RTs, ask them questions, get their opinions, and promote what they do. When your core group is talking about you, they are promoting you. And I wholeheartedly believe in giving back to each person in this group what they have given to me.

I talk about anything and everything on twitter, although I try to stick to the topics of work, life and crafting. I use Twitterfeed to feed my blogs and podcast to twitter and to share what I find interesting in my Google Reader. Although I sing its praises, there’s a fine line between putting your work out there and overdoing it on the feeds. Don’t be that guy – don’t turn your twitter stream into an RSS feed that rehashes information 24/7.

I get the most responses from others when I talk about the things they are passionate about. It makes it easy when you choose to connect with people that are into what you’re into. I also participate in industry-specific chats on twitter to make connections with others that are in the same field I am.

Most importantly, I’m authentic. No response from or interaction with me is automated or regurgitated. I don’t auto DM. I don’t spam my stream. I believe that twitter is all about interaction, and that is the aspect that I most like about it.

Every blogger should be on twitter, but only if they are willing to do two things: One, you have to be perfectly fine with being transparent. If you’re not okay with that, blogging may not be the best platform for you anyway. Two, you have to be passionate about building and engaging your community. That’s what blogging is about anyway though, right? But before you get started, have realistic expectations. It will take time to build a following, and it will be lonely at first. Once you get the hang of it, it’s a lot of fun.

That’s my twitter story and I’m sticking to it.

Are you on twitter? Leave a comment and let us know who you are on twitter. How are you using twitter to promote yourself and your work?

Image Credit: Sasha Wolff