You Do Have Time For Social Media. A Time Investment For Busy People.
A lot of people that I meet tell me that they simply “don’t have time” to be successful in personal branding or social media. In fact, they don’t even have time to read this post so I’m going to make this fast.
You think you don’t have time because you’ve chosen labor intensive outlets. Facebook, communities with newsfeeds, and especially Twitter take time to cultivate and succeed at. Reading through a million blogs and news items takes lots of time (and isn’t actually social media technically) If you only have 20 min. a day to allot for your online presence – you might not have time for a Facebook Fan page, and a brand Twitter feed, and a few other random things.
If you have 20 minutes a day -
(8 min.) Choose the 1 thing you want to talk about today or this week. Think of it like speed dating. You’re only going to be able to have the briefest of conversations. Just look at Seth Godin. His blog posts are short and to the point. Although he puts his idea of the day out there on his blog you can say it anywhere you want (short video, Twitter, LinkedIn group). For example, I wanted to talk about being busy today so I wanted to provide something helpful for busy people and maybe even talk to a few of them today. Don’t spend your time thinking of something to say on Facebook, 5 Twitter updates, reading 18 blogs, etc. Just think of 1 thing you want to say and then say it.
(5 min.) Save up cool stuff. I have an open document all the time to copy and paste interesting things that I might want to talk about at some point. I spend time in the evening going through some of these so I have a few things to talk about the next day or the next few days. It really helps to have a little cache of things up your sleeve for the day when you have only 5 minutes to devote to social media.
Don’t continue to use outlets that don’t have ANY return. If the friends you have on your brand Facebook page are your employees and their families then that is not a good place to spend your 20 minutes a day. This is what makes people think they don’t have time for social media – throwing time at strategies that aren’t really working. It’s extremely important if you don’t have a ton of time that you determine which things are working and which are just time suck. For example, maybe you tweeted something about your business 10 days ago and it got 10 retweets. Write down the topic of that tweet and try to write a little post for your blog about it, or tweet on the topic again. I watch brands spend a lot of time updating certain channels and when I ask them if they are getting anything out of it they tell me no. This isn’t good time spent. It’s ok to put away the Facebook fan page in favor of something that works better until you have time to find a strategy for Facebook and make it really work for you.
(7 min. ) Don’t forget to actually…. converse a bit. You don’t need to respond to everything but if someone takes the time to email you, comment with something thoughtful, or retweet you a few times you should reach out and respond. It can be a few days later but you should take 7 of your 20 min. to do this. Take the ENTIRE 7 min. to respond or otherwise converse. Building these relationships are the whole point of social media.
I find that I do too much saving of cool stuff and not even thinking about how to construct an interesting conversation about that cool stuff. While I would love to just blast out a link and say, check this out what do you think?, it doesn’t typically lead to useful conversation.
On the other hand I’ve had good luck doing the last thing and starting cool conversations with people that have been interesting. Like right now for instance!
Keep on rockin in the free world C-Mac
Royce – haha, yeah I spend significantly more than 7 minutes on the “saving cool stuff” a day. The thing is though, it does pay off. Lots of my clients benefit from the fact that I know obscure chess bloggers and moms blogging about having triplets and bartenders with sites on how to make drinks from the 1940′s. For most people though, it’s making the jump into commenting and conversing that’s hard. Brands get really wrapped up in “creating their message” that they don’t realize the offhand tweet someone made about a local band got 35 retweets and is a conversation point.
I hear the “I don’t have time…” line all the time too. Personally, I think it’s a crock of shit because WE ARE ALL busy. Really. It’s all about the choice you make or integrating it into the fold of your life…if it’s important to you. If it’s not and you don’t have time for it, then don’t do it or don’t complain about it. Quite often, the people who lament about the lack of time are the ones who don’t find or understand the value in it (it being loosely, social media).
This is such a good post – you’re so clear in if you have this amount of time, then do this. I think all those naysayers should read this and keep it in their back pocket for whenever a complaint is voiced
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