How much time do you spend networking? Have you found that social marketing can take up a lot of time? How do you structure your networking time?
Whether you are an avid user of Facebook, a mover and shaker on LinkedIn, a MySpace groupie, a member of all three, or a connoisseur of every social networking site online, you need to think about how to best structure your time so that you get the most out of the activity. You need to look at your ROI in terms of time = money in non-pay-off activities like social networking as much as you do in your advertising dollars. So how do you do that?
When it comes to social marketing, there are a myriad of activities that involve time. Some of those activities may translate into additional business for your company, but many do not. For instance, finding and approving friends could lead to earned income if one of those friends becomes a customer, but how often does that happen? On the other hand, leaving wall messages at Facebook could be time consuming with little payoff. Some social networking activities you may find yourself participating in include:
- Searching for friends
- Approving friendship requests
- Sending friend requests
- Answering mail messages
- Sending mail messages
- Writing on walls
- Blogging
- Creating apps
- Installing apps
- Designing your page
I’m sure you can think of a few activities of your own. But you have to make sure every activity you participate in pays off in some way. So how do you do that?
First, you should decide how much time you can afford to devote to social marketing each day or week. Can you devote one hour a day? Two hours a week? Five hours a month? Narrow it down. Make sure you count the cost in time in terms of what you can afford to lose without seeing a return. That way, you don’t spend a lot of time doing something that doesn’t pay off when you could be doing things that do pay off. Then, if you see a return on your networking activities, you can start putting in more time where you’re getting the pay off.
Secondly, only spend time doing those things at those places that are getting you a return. If you see yourself spending a lot of time responding to friend requests at MySpace and no business coming from it then you might want to drop that activity. But I highly recommend not approving every request you get. Only approve those requests from people who have similar interests to yours.
Thirdly, focus on your time and energy only on those social networks that will pay off. Everyone doesn’t need a MySpace page. Some people won’t fit in at LinkedIn. If your product or service won’t draw attention at Facebook then stay away from Facebook. You don’t need it.
Granted, many of these things you can’t know until you do them. Try them out. Test them. Measure them. Then decide. You’re the boss. Make some tough decisions and go with it.
