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Social Media Fitness – Anaerobic Endurance and Content Creation

Posted by on Mar 19, 2012 in Blog, Social Media, Sports, Workout | 10 comments

Social Media Fitness – Anaerobic Endurance and Content Creation

Welcome to the fourth installment of Social Media Fitness – Zone Training: Anaerobic Endurance and Content Creation. You can read about Zone 1, Zone 2 and Zone 3 to catch up with the series.

  1. We have warmed up by doing our research and preparing our strategy.
  2. We spent quality “base building” time in our Fat Burn zone as we built up our social media tribe.
  3. We began to burn more efficiently and improve our threshold in our Aerobic zone as we worked on content curation.
  4. Now we are ready for Content Creation!

Let’s complete this stage of the zone training fitness analogy by discussing the Objectives, Application and “Feeling” of Zone 4 in regards to both fitness and social media.

Objective:

Fitness Exercise longer at anaerobic intensities, improve threshold, increase cardiac performance to do more work at a lower heart rate.
Social Media Build upon and leverage the trust established, during tribe development and content curation zones, to start introducing our own original content (most likely *not* promotional).

Application:

Fitness Intense, medium-length intervals, time trials and tempo workouts, possibly group fitness opportunities
Social Media Regarding interval training, we are still building up the intensity of those intervals over time. We should do the same with our content creation efforts.

  1. Twitter is a micro-blogging platform, so treat it as a vehicle for passing along personalized insight, humor and empathy in 140 characters. In fact, work to get your content to 130 characters, so you are more likely to be retweeted. You can also join Twitter Chats for rapid interaction around common interests (treat them as “group fitness” opportunities). Here is a great 12Most post to get you started with TwitterChats, and I will also throw #DadChat into the mix which is hosted by the gregarious and insightful Bruce Sallan.
  2. By now, you are probably following blogs that align with your professional and personal interests. I prefer to set up RSS feeds which I can use with both BundlePost (for content curation) and Google Reader (often used with Buffer for further content curation). However, we should now take the time to comment on these blogs to show the authors our appreciation. Unlike tweets, blog comments have a much longer “shelf life”. You not only get to express your ideas with more than 140 characters, you are also likely to establish a two-way dialogue with the blog author and other commenters. Each blog comment is linked to your social profile via Twitter/Facebook/Livefyre/Disqus/Wordpress, so readers may click on your profile for weeks/months/years versus a tweet that frequently gets lost in the “noise” if not noticed within the hour.
  3. LinkedIn Group Discussions provide another venue for offering your insight in greater than 140 characters. Similar to blog comments, these discussions may stay active for weeks! As long as you are both courteous and knowledgeable, you can count on other readers clicking on your avatar to see your LinkedIn profile. And by now, you have that LinkedIn profile 100% complete, right (with ties to your Twitter account, corporate website and possibly your blog)?!?
  4. We are ready to push that interval intensity to the highest – time to start blogging! From a platform perspective, I prefer WordPress. However, you can read this comparison of the major blogging platforms. Reserving some “capacity” for the last zone in our Zone Fitness series, Speed/Power, I just want to touch upon a few highlights regarding blogging in this zone. First, develop a backlog of posts, and an even longer backlog of post ideas, before promoting your blog. Secondly, determine a posting frequency that you can sustain. Then prepare an editorial calendar to keep you on task. Finally, just like every running interval will not be your best time/distance ever…do not get paralyzed by thinking each blog post has to be the best ever.
And just like intervals have a duration, we should establish both times and durations for our daily social media interaction intervals. The key is to be efficient and effective versus social media simply becoming a “time sink”.

Feeling:

Fitness Starting to get a little more difficult and uncomfortable. Our muscles feel heavy, the burn is intense, and we noticeably feel like we cannot go much longer. Mentally, we might be looking for a “way out”.
Social Media Content creation takes time and creativity. It can be both difficult and uncomfortable, and at times we will definitely be looking for a way out. But think about it from an athlete’s perspective. If you’ve put all the work into building a foundation of strength and endurance, do you really want to turn your back on all of your hard work?Instead, develop a discipline around your work habits. Be “on when you are on, and off when you should be off”. Athletes break down when they over-train, and we can burnout if we do not step away from the computer. Take time off weekly, and consider taking longer offseasons to completely recover and recharge.
  • Did you know that both Fitness and Social Media Zone Training require good monitoring? I use a product called DigiFit for my fitness zone training, and I encourage you to review Mantis Pulse Analytics for social media monitoring.
  • Expect the social media parallel to Zone 5 – Speed/Power to involve blogging tips!

I look forward to your comments as we wrap up this series. If you enjoy these posts, please Stumble them to further encourage social sharing and discussion of these ideas.

*Note: Fitness descriptions were paraphrased from Training Zone descriptions provided by New Leaf and Lifetime Fitness LifeLab. These are not sponsors…I just appreciate their services.

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Brian Vickery

I love my Vickery Girls - and now grandsons! I am blessed in that I also love my job as a VP of Enterprise Solutions for ProKarma. I appreciate the convergence of big data and data visualization in our Pulse Analytics social listening and analytics platform as well as our core software / mobile app development, business intelligence, and test automation services. I enjoy teaching and coaching, watching football and basketball, and playing tennis. I graduated UT-Austin. You can find Brian on .

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10 Comments

  1. Janet Callaway / March 19, 2012

    Brian, aloha. Love that I am getting physically and socially fit with your guidance.

    So agree with your comments on tweetchats; there are so many great ones available.

    Today I read Will’s 12Most post on internet marketing tips and he taught me something important. He said to put the link about 25% of the way into the tweet rather than at the end. In most instances, I have been doing it incorrectly. What a simple thing to change.

    Okay, Brian, now that it’s official, I look forward to your Peyton Manning post. Until alter, aloha. Janet

    • Brian Vickery / March 19, 2012

      I definitely have some work ahead of me regarding the Peyton Manning signing. Might come at it from a Leadership perspective…or perhaps a 12 Most perspective!

      I’ve heard about the strategy of URL location within the tweet. I have experimented with not having it at the very end, but I haven’t drilled it in my everyday use.

      Glad you are enjoying the Social Media Fitness series, Janet. I’ve had fun writing it…and sweat a little bit, also (although not enough since I’m still at the low end of the base building, ARGH).

  2. Bruce Sallan (@BruceSallan) / March 19, 2012

    Okay, I’m commenting again! Yipes, I HATE when I comment and it disappears. I was so clever, so funny with that comment. Now, I’m tired and it’s forgotten. DARN! Well, I just wanted to thank you for mentioning me and #DadChat…it’s my baby, as you know, BV and I’m so grateful for the GREAT people I meet through it and for people like you who are always so supportive!

    • Brian Vickery / March 19, 2012

      Thanks for adding the comment back again, Bruce. I’m sure this one is twice as insightful as the previous one! You know I am a big fan of #DadChat as a great resource for parents every Thursday night at 6pm PST. I also appreciate your efforts getting around to commenting on so many blogs like mine.

      How did that camera work out for you on the Mammoth ski slopes today?

  3. Annalie Killian (@maverickwoman) / March 20, 2012

    Love it! We are in Zone 1….and looking for help!

  4. Annalie Killian (@maverickwoman) / March 20, 2012

    We’re at Zone 1…but getting one person fit as to asking 20 teams to join in the same fitness regime….all with various levels of fitness and experience and motivation…..so that as a sports team who needs to ply together to win…now thats a much different challenge. Any post to deal with that?

    • Brian Vickery / March 20, 2012

      I just visited your site for the first time, Annalie. Yes, it can be a trick if you have varying skill levels with different levels of fitness, experience and motivation. I actually wrote a post regarding “Recreational vs Competitive sports” that discussed that issue a little. It is nice when you can divide recreational from competitive so each level can enjoy what they are doing at the motivation level where they are comfortable. Regarding different levels of fitness, that is when you can use “heats” to group people by fitness levels/experience.

      In the social media world, you can definitely break out recreational from competitive, and each could still have a positive influence on your brand perception with the right coaching and training/social media policy. For those that want to increase their fitness levels, and become a more active participant in your communications, then they need a team captain to mentor them for awhile.

  5. Janice aka JPlovesCOTTON / March 20, 2012

    I love that you created this series! so fun & enlightening to see things in a different way

    • Brian Vickery / March 20, 2012

      Thanks, Janice. Folks like you have been generous with their feedback. I am glad I took the time to expand into a 5-part, bite-size chunk series versus try to write one lengthy post where I might have had to edit out some of the good stuff.

      I may use this series as a basis for onsite training…I think it could truly benefit organizations. I know because I “lived it” ;)

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