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One of the most prominent barriers to social media engagement is “I just don’t have time” or even “[insert social site here] is just a waste of time.”
Agreed, Twitter, Facebook and the like CAN be huge time-sucks and the line between time-suckage and utility is a very fine one that requires a lot of monitoring and self-discipline. Social media can be overwhelming and it’s all too easy to just start clicking on people’s profiles, following links to blog posts and generally getting lost in the maze of the interweb. Before you know it you’ve wasted 30 minutes and not done anything productive. However, once you are able to get past the time-waste factor, you can begin to see the benefits of being involved. I hope these tips will provide some practical methods to optimize your engagement.
1) “How much time should I spend doing social media?”
To start out with, whatever time you can comfortably and realistically carve out for yourself, preferably on a daily basis. You might start out with 30 minutes a day. Or if you have a team, maybe it’s an hour, split between 2 or 3 members. I believe that a small amount every day is better than a longer block once per week. Once you get the hang of things and start to integrate social media into your marketing even more, the amount of time will most likely expand – this is great so long as you keep a tight focus.
2) “Sometimes it looks like people are Twittering all day long – I don’t have that kind of time.”
Some people probably ARE on Twitter all day long and others just look like they are because they are using tools like Hootsuite to schedule their tweets. Work smarter not harder. Automation cannot replace the human touch, but it can supplement your efforts and increase your productivity. Schedule your content-based Tweets in advance so that when you get online you can focus on responding to messages, joining in current conversations and other activities that are time-sensitive. If you have a blog, Hootsuite can be set up to automatically send out a Tweet when you publish a new blog post. There are many automation tools out there such as CoTweet, Ping.fm and more. I’ll probably post about some in the future, for now, just Google ‘em!
3) Know your macro and micro goals
Your ‘macro’ goal is the big picture. Why am I doing social media? What is the long term goal for engagement? Increased visibility? More email addresses? More traffic to the website? Branding? Increased communication with customers?
Have a clear idea about your long-term social media goals before you start and see how it fits into the bigger picture of your business or non-profit. Know why you are involved in the first place so you have a sense of purpose and motivation.
On the ‘micro’ level, know what you plan on accomplishing in that particular session. Are you looking for new people to follow? Do you want to spend 15 minutes replying to @replies? And another 15 looking for great comments to Re-Tweet? Whatever your objectives are, be as specific as possible in the beginning so you have a sense of achievement and feel that you are getting things done which are contributing to your larger goal.
4) Don’t try and be everywhere, grow sustainably
Each social network requires time and effort – social media only works as much as you work it. This means that you won’t be able to be equally active on every networking site. To start out with, pick one or two that you think will be most beneficial for your business. That might be Twitter, or it might be a very niche site that caters to your type of customer or business. Make some progress at your chosen site(s) before trying to expand out into other networks too soon. If you have too many balls in the air and not enough time or attention to give them, you’ll get frustrated and probably give it up entirely.
5) Speed networking or long-lasting relationships?
Will you try and connect in a superficial way with as many people as possible? Or will you be looking to create deeper connections with a very specific and targeted group of people? Your approach will vary according to your goals and business but the point is that you won’t be able to be best buddies with everyone. And at some
