A big dependency is the platform you’re using. Or rather, the platforms. If you’re using Twitter, with its 140-character limit, posting less generally means posting more. (That is, fewer words leads to greater frequency). Plus, it’s really easy and you can do it while you’re on the go. (There’s that use of interstitial time again.)

Here’s something that’s almost cheating: Pipe your Twitter updates into your blog using an embeddable widget, and it’s a way to pass updates to your blog without doing a full-on blog entry.

And what about that full-on blog? In the Time Demands video (from the Solution Stars Video series), blogger/author Tim Ferriss says that, contrary to some rules that others advocate, he generally posts twice per week… but he’s sure to put effort into those two posts. (Of course, you would expect that, since he advocates for The 4-Hour Workweek). So it’s the quality-versus-quantity approach.

At the If You Build It, Will They Come? event, Frank Warren of PostSecret shared the method behind his unique variation of this — he updates once a week, on Sundays, which not only sets up his blog entries as appointment programming, but it also enforces an artificial scarcity: It keeps people always hungry for more. Obviously, this approach won’t work for most folks, but it goes to show that more isn’t better — better is better.

This ties in to the very important setting of reader expectations. If you know you’re going to be posting relatively infrequently (a couple of times per week, or even per month, or only when specific events happen), be upfront about it. Let people know what to expect, and provide ways that they can keep tabs on your blog. I’m thinking specifically of one-click RSS-to-e-mail solutions that pop off an e-mail when you update (Feedburner, among others, offers this) — it works great for blogs that don’t update that frequently.

Then, think about ways you can streamline your publishing workflow, and how you can optimize it to your writing style. Also at the If You Build It event, Rohit Bhargava said his ideal blog week consisted of three posts, with his typical posting schedule starting on Sunday night, with a goal of having a completed blog entry ready to publish at 1AM Monday, and two half-completed posts to work on during his train ride commutes during the rest of the week.

The most important thing to consider when looking at posting frequency is looking at your readers. Not just the analytics, but also commenting and other reactions and feedback. See if you can discern patterns in your traffic that relate to your posting schedule. You probably won’t be able to do strict A/B testing, but you can see if time of day or day of week posting affects your metrics. And try to find out from your readers if they’re getting what they need from your posts — whether they want more, or if they could do with less. Ask and listen.

Whatever you do, please avoid the temptation to shovel in filler posts to boost your post frequency. Filler posts dilute the value of your “real” posts. Just don’t do it.

I don’t think I’ve covered any new ground here, but I’m curious to hear about your posting schedule, and how you came about it. If you’d like to share, leave a comment below — when it comes to your posting frequency, are you a “more” or a “less”?

Here are some quick recaps:

Brian Solis, Author of PR2.0, CEO Futureworks: Small businesses now have direct access to the people who can help them make their businesses grow, on a mass scale. Now, small businesses can be influential and become authorities, and build communities around them, based on their expertise.

Rohit Barghava, author, “Personality Not Included“: Small business owners understand the power of word of mouth marketing and customer referrals. It’s cheap, viral, and works.

Tim Ferriss, author, The 4-Hour Workweek: To get online, first get offline — go to conferences, meet people, have credible people online vouching for you — then connect with them online.

Steve Hall, Publisher, Editor, Adrants: Reach out to everyone in your industry, get to know them, and broaden your circle of social friends. Eventually, you’ll be able to use the network to help spread whatever you’re trying to spread.

Toby Bloomberg, CEO Bloomberg Marketing: Small businesses especially build businesses through relationships, which they can do through through blogs, podcasts, video. Social media was built for small businesses, and lets them scale further.

Ryan Anderson, Community Relations, Overlay.TV: It’s an incredible opportunity for small business to bypass filters to get to core customers. The tools let you create conversation that you just can’t do through traditional media.

Darren Rowse, Author, ProBlogger: If starting out again, he’d spend a lot of time defining his niche, establishing self as expert, offering to guest blog in other expert blogs (for free), to get own his content and expertise out.

David Alston, VP of Marketing, Radian6: Small business can use social media to build a brand, in a highly targeted way. Talk to the people in your space and reach out to them.

Mari Smith, Relationship Marketing Specialist: Radical Strategic Visibility — your goal is to be ubiquitous, in a way that excites people.

Liz Strauss, Social Web Strategist, Successful Blog: Use the internet to become irresistible — know which type of people on the Internet they’re going after — readers, people who do, offer and sell things, and people who pass on info to their friends.

Paul Chaney, President, Int’l Blogging and New Media Association: Small business is best suited to use a lot of these tools — an example is a custom signmaker with a blog, who shows the process and tells the story of making the sign, to help customers get to know him.

Find anything particularly meaningful (or offbase) here among our experts’ opinions? Leave a comment and let us know what you think about the social opportunities for small business.

In this episode our stars were able to provide some great insight on managing the demands on your time when you add social media into your bag of marketing tools.

Some highlights include:

- You don’t have to write everyday. It is all about quality over quantity
- Figure out what you want to say
- If you are using social media to interface with customers you need to “be in the trenches”
- Evaluate paid advertising to drive traffic and awareness to your blog
- Carefully manage your resources
- Solicit content from your users and customers. Including guest posting, case studies and testimonials
- Ask yourself “what would you do for the next 10 years if you couldn’t make money”. That is the passion you have and that will show to your customers, even on a blog.

The stars in this episode include Chris Baggot, Rohit Bhargava, Toby Bloomberg, Chris Brogan, Paul Chaney, Tim Ferriss, Tony Hsieh, Jennifer Openshaw and Wendy Piersall.

Here is the full episode:

Here are some recaps of what they said:

Guy Kawasaki, founder, AllTop: Twitter is a great way to find and spread information — it’s a way to reach thousands of people, immediately and free (which is great). It takes a little getting used to; give it a month or so — you might hate it for the first few days, but it’ll work out [which mirrors my own experience with Twitter, except I took longer because I am slow]

Ryan Anderson, Community Relations, Overlay.TV: They’re active on Twitter (including the executives), not just for promoting their stuff, but engaging with community. Their CEO will also use Summize weekly (now Twitter’s search) to get feedback directly from users, which is great for businesses, especially young companies.

Wendy Piersall, CEO Sparkplugging.com: You should also use other tools (depending on your business) like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. She doesn’t think you can conduct business online without participating in these types of communities.

Scott Monty, Global Digital and Multimedia Community Manager, Ford Motor Company: People have been networking since the Stone Age, but modern tools let us create networks of subject matter experts. “You don’t have to be the best accountant; you have to hire the best accountant” — online social networks let you tap into people who can help you — you’re not in it alone.

Liz Strauss, Social Web Strategist, Successful Blog: All this has changed the way she would start a business today. Use social networks to find out who’s out there; start on Twitter to listen to people and watch what’s going on. Open the door by promoting other people.

Tim Ferriss, author, The 4-Hour Workweek: Blogging isn’t for everyone, but there’s no excuse not to be on Twitter. You can use it as a blog, and you can be effective using it as a personality and brand on Twitter (like newspapers, activists, others are using it).

Chris Brogan, VP of Strategy, CrossTech Media: Small businesses should use social media tools to create  outposts where people can get to know you — put your face and presence out there, just like shopkeepers hanging out and meeting people in a town. “It’s all the same, it’s just different… but it’s all the same.”

Jason Billingsley, Co-founder, Elastic Path Software — Retailers need to build relationships and community; once you do that, your message is accepted. There are many avenues, like YouTube — many people are educating consumers by doing how-to and instructional videos. They’re informing, not selling, and by creating trust, then they look to you when they need to do transactions.

Mari Smith, Relationship Marketing Specialist: “Radical Strategic Visibility” — using Facebook, social bookmarks, blogging, Friendfeed, etc, — all the tools, in an integrated strategy.

Jennifer Openshaw, President, WeSeed.com: Bringing credibility online is important, and positioning yourself as an expert. A way to do this is to create content on your site, which you can also distribute through partners and social networking sites, so you can add value to people, even when you’re not trying to sell them stuff.

Agree or disagree with something from one of our ten social media experts? Please leave a comment below.

- Everyone should have a web presence
- If you are doing business beyond five miles from your office you need a least a web site
- Word of mouth is critical and the web helps in that
- At the very basic on your site should be directions and information on your business

The complete video is below. It is definitely worth watching a few times to get all these important goodies that these experts in the field can provide.

If you’ve been enjoying the events that we’ve been bringing you, then you will NOT want to miss this one! This one requires no travel you can attend it from the convenience of your office or home! We’ve created a free video conference that’s jam packed with insights & online marketing tips for small businesses!

Mark your calendar because on October 29 at 1 pm we’re providing the Solutions Stars Video Conference! Geoff Livingston, author of Now is Gone, & Network Solutions Social Media Swami Shashi Bellamkonda met with 32 top bloggers at BlogWorld Expo. We asked them to share their insights & tips on online marketing for small businesses for you. It was all captured on video & now we have a conference features nine different documentary style video sessions:

• Building Web Presence
• The Social Opportunity
• Start with Listening
• Strategy Drives Outreach
• You Need Social Networks
• To Blog or Not to Blog
• Visibility Through Search
• Rising Above the Noise
• Time Demands

In addition to the Solutions Stars Video Conference site, please visit the event pages on Facebook and Upcoming.

Here are the steps:

a) Bookmark this page – http://www.solutionsstarsvideo.com/

b) Create a calendar event for themselves

c) Choose the event time

d) Come up with good questions for the chat room

We’d love it if you’d grab a badge for your blog or site.

Steve: Let’s start out with the basic concept of productivity. Do you think technology has helped us or just increased our ability to handle more?
Jared: When I started SET (software efficiency training) Consulting in 2002 it was with the hope of getting people more productive with technology, so they could better enjoy their work and leave their offices a little earlier. But most people are as concerned with how much they work as they are with the results. That is, they feel the need to work at least eight hours, regardless.
So, technology does help us to accomplish more, and certainly offers conveniences. But, in and of itself, I don’t think it’s led us to work less or be any happier.

Steve: How long have you been working in the technology space? What motivated you to start SET Consulting?
Jared: I’ve been in technology since my first HTML support job at a startup in ’95. I worked in web or Windows development at four other startups, half of which are still in existence, and I spent three years in development with the Federal Trade Commission.

While working at the FTC I realized that even the most technical users weren’t particularly adept with the seemingly basic Microsoft products like Word, Excel, and Outlook. I saw this both walking-through the office, and in some training sessions I held. After some more investigation, I considered that there was a market in helping people who used these tools 6+ hours per day. I had always been the kid who shared the little “computer tricks” with friends; it turned out that law firms, government agencies, and small businesses needed those tricks even more.

Steve: What is your philosophy on using technology to become more productive?
Jared: Productivity should never be an end in itself. If you focus just on how long things take, then you can become a cog in a machine. But if you can better apply your time to skip past the minutiae, then you can be more creative and add greater value to everything you touch—in other words, a little thought about productivity can help people to use technology as a vehicle rather than an obstacle to getting stuff done.

Steve: You are definitely someone who has been inspired by productivity thought leaders. Who do you find are most effective and why?
Jared: I’ve learned and been inspired by people like Tim Ferriss and Marc Orchant. Tim has really helped people to see their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s completely differently: as the time we should really be enjoying ourselves. Marc Orchant was a personal role model who exemplified just how much the tools can accomplish, and where to draw the line between tools and education. So many others have offered their ideas and inspiration, and I was an early adopter of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, as you might guess.

He taught me that whatever we do for personal organization, we need to rely on a system and get stuff out of our head, or we’ll never be able to focus and things will always slip through the cracks.

Steve: Switching gears a bit, I would like to talk about your exciting new project, AwayFind. This summer you launched it in a small beta and have grown it since then. What is the basic principle of AwayFind?
Jared: The principle that underlies AwayFind is that one needs to check their email less often if they want to focus on the task at hand, or escape from their work. AwayFind makes this possible by giving people the confidence that they can be reached with time-sensitive messages when they’re not checking their email.

Steve: How was it motivated by the “4-Hour Work Week”?
Jared: Tim stressed the value of an auto-responder to assist in people’s email workflow. I really liked the idea, but didn’t want people to have to call me when they needed me sooner. So I decided to create a similar solution with AwayFind—rather than providing my phone number, I placed a web link in my auto responder that could SMS me or delegate the problem when something urgent arose.

Steve: What are some lessons good or bad you have learned from a software product like this?
Jared: The slogan for SET Consulting used to be, “Technology does not create productive people. We do” – it stressed that how people use technology drives their productivity, not the software itself. Similarly, AwayFind on its own won’t make people more productive—they still have to check their email less often. In building AwayFind I’ve learned how to draw the line between what technology can accomplish and what I have to offer or teach people in order to change their behavior. I’m still learning.

Steve: How much does it cost and how does one signup for the beta?
Jared: AwayFind is “Freemium”—most features are totally free, but some additional branding, security, and routing features will be purchasable for a few dollars per month (still working out the exact price, but it’ll be in the $5-10/range and offer 30-day trials.)

The first 25 who click over to www.awayfind.com from this page will get an invitation code within an hour.

Steve: As we close the interview I would like to leave our mostly overworked small business owners who are our loyal readers a bit of productivity advice. What are the top 5 things a small business owner can do to get more productive?
Jared:
Gosh, that’s a tough question. Most of it comes down to guarding your time and minimizing interruptions:
1. Turn off all email notifications: on your smartphone, in your email program, etc.
2. Don’t multitask: do one thing and do it well.
3. Learn lots of keyboard shortcuts instead of just mouse-clicking things. It’ll take a few weeks to master them, but 2 seconds saved 1,000 times per day will add up
4. If there’s something you really want to accomplish but continue to have trouble with, tie an external commitment to it—for instance, tell your friends you’re doing it, set a deadline that costs money that relies upon it, make a plan with a co-worker/spouse/friend to work on it one day/weekend, etc
5. Sign up for www.awayfind.com and stop checking your email 100 times per day!