How much time should you put into social media? Some people believe just a few minutes a week is enough, while others believe it should comprise of the majority of your time. The reality is somewhere in between.
Social media today is an integral part of any successful business. Almost everyone is on these networks, from your partners to your readers to your vendors to your clients. That said, there’s still only so much you can do every day on social media.
Approach social media with an 80/20 mindset. Of course it’s possible to spend 8 hours a day on social media. But chances are, in about an hour you’ll have connected with the most important contacts and said everything you have to say.
After the first hour, you’re more or less just spending time doing things that may or may not have much of an impact on your bottom line. Instead of doing this, it’s best to just commit to spending one hour a day on social media.
This consistent attention will allow you to make connections with all the most important people, while spending the rest of your time on the rest of your business.
Developing a Social Media Marketing Strategy is About Cultivating Relationships
Don’t think of social media like TV advertising. With TV advertising, your goal is to “touch” as many people as you can. Each person might not know much about you or your brand, but you’re okay with that. You just want to make a small impression on them.
Social media Marketing is different. Think of social media like a business mingler. There are a lot of people there and you might shake hands with a large number of people.
At the end of the day however, you have to pick and choose just a few people to get to know better. These people could turn out to be customers, they could turn out to be joint venture partners, they could turn out to be mentors.
On social media, it’s simply unrealistic to get to know everyone who’s following you. However, you can and should pick a few high impact people to develop connections with. Exchanging a message or two a day is quick and easy, but can result in powerful business connections down the line.
Schedule it in – It’s Not Optional
A lot of people treat social media for business as an optional activity. After all, browsing Facebook and Twitter can seem like a trivial activity on the surface.
It’s not. It’s a crucial business networking tactic that simply cannot be ignored. And unlike other marketing tactics, you can’tmakeup for it by stuffing in more time later.
Spending 7 hours one day on social media is not the same thing as spending 1 hour a day on social media. You can’t have conversations in a day, you can’t develop relationships in bulk and you can’t stay in touch all at once.
Instead, it’s something that has to be done every day. So schedule it into your daily schedule, just as you would any other important business task. Social media marketing isn’t something that can be neglected. If something comes up, move it to another time, but never skip it.
If You Don’t Have a Strong Plan…
If you don’t have a strong social media plan yet, allocate an extra 30 minutes a day to learning about social media and planning your strategy.
Just browsing Facebook isn’t social media marketing. The goal of social media marketing is to create engagement with people on the social web. There are a lot of different factors that go into this eventual end goal.
If you don’t know how to maximize your time spent on social media yet, spend a bit of time studying up on the subject.
Learn to Enjoy it!
Social media marketing shouldn’t feel like a chore. You’re on Facebook! You’re on Twitter! It should be fun and interesting. You’re meeting new people, making new contacts and making progress in your business.
Learn to enjoy social media marketing, so that you’ll look forward to it rather than avoid it. Learn to enjoy it, so that when you get an email once you’re off work, you’ll still naturally want to respond to it.
Social media for businesses is a critically important tool that can’t be ignored. However, you should also be careful and make sure it doesn’t suck up all your time. About one hour a day is the perfect amount of time to spend on social media marketing.
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