In Stage 3 of my 3 Stages of Social Media Success, I talk about refining what you’re doing. The dictionary.com meaning of refine is to perfect by polishing or pruning.

I recently achieved a weight-loss goal. I was able to release 20 pounds in six months thankfully, have kept it off.

Now that I’ve reached my weight loss goals, it isn’t time for me to sit back, relax, and eat all the junk food I desire. Instead, I do activities and I eat foods that help me maintain my current weight.

But the tasks I did to help me release 20-lbs aren’t the tasks I use to maintain my current weight. I refine my eating plan and my activities at the gym to help me maintain – and even surpass – my current weight.

This is similar to your social media marketing strategy. Just because you’ve reached some of your social media goals, doesn’t mean it’s time to relax. Instead, you need to refine what you’re doing because the things you did with social media to help you reach your current goals aren’t the same things you should be doing to maintain or surpass them.

So, how do you do this?

You need to make a decision about who will continue to do the social media tasks in your business. Some of you may be thinking about giving up on social media because it takes to much time. Others of you might be contemplating outsourcing some of the social media tasks that you no longer enjoy.

In his book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Eckart Tolle states that there are 3 modalities of awakened doing:

• Acceptance,
• Enjoyment and
• Enthusiasm

When you’re doing a task, if you’re not in the state of acceptance, enjoyment or enthusiasm, you need to refine your approach. You are now ready to move into what I call the 3 Modalities of Business Refinement – eliminate, delegate or automate.

In this his book the 4 Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss talks about elimination, automation and delegation. He states that when you eliminate, automate or delegate tasks, you then create liberation. Ferriss states:

“It is not only possible to accomplish more by doing less, it is mandatory.”

Here’s a checklist you can use to decide what to eliminate, automate or delegate:

___ Have you lost the joy in using a specific social media tool?

___ Can your virtual assistant approve new friends on Facebook, follow new people on Twitter or make new connections on LinkedIn following your criteria?

___ Is there a tool online that can do some of your social media tasks for you?

— Is there a social media tool not helping you achieve your business goals?

— Is there something else in your business that you can outsource to free up your time to use social media?

If you’ve answered yes to any of the questions above, either eliminate the task, delegate it to an assistant or automate it using an online tool.

Want to Learn More About Social Media Outsourcing?

I’m co-hosting a teleclass on Thursday May 28, 2009 at 5pm EDT with Craig Cannings on the 5 social media tasks you can outsource and still be authentic. Craig opened my eyes on a few issues and I invite you to this free call so you can discover my a-ha moment in regards to this issue.  You’ll be quite surprised. Click here to get more info on this call and to register your spot.

Photo courtesy of Bogaugon