How Much Time Does Social Media Really Take?

One of the most common reasons that I hear for not participating in Social Media is “I don’t have time to do any more than I’m doing now.”I usually hear that as someone is handing me a flier for an upcoming event, or talking to me about what they are currently working on, etc. And while I enjoy networking and connecting offline – and yes, face time is still important – these conversations are one-on-one. How much more efficient can you be when you are communicating with hundreds and potentially thousands of interested people?
Social media allows you to communicate one-to-many at one time rather than communicating one-on-one many times.

Which still begs the question, how much time does social media REALLY take?

The answer is as much or as little time as you want to invest.

I know of one organization that has one individual assigned to monitor and participate in social media. She spends about 15 minutes twice a week. And they have noticed a marked increase in traffic to their site, increased Google alerts regarding their name (that’s a good thing!) and more participating in their events. Not bad for 1/2 hour per week.

A client of mine who is responsible for the marketing for her firm spends about 1 hour a day and has noticed increased traffic to their site, greater participation in their social media efforts – comments and shares – which increases her “reach.” In her words “If I could never write another policy and do this all day long, I would!”

Set The Timer When Your Working On Your Social Media Marketing

So while you may not think you have time to spend frittering away precious hours on social media, you really don’t need to; unless you want to.

Figure out the minimum amount of time you can spend on social media per week. Set a time so you spend that much time, and no more. Be sure to track your results. It doesn’t need to be high tech or expensive. Just get an idea of how many people are connected with you, how many times people are sharing your info and what it’s doing for your website traffic. That will give you a sense of how your efforts are paying off.

You may decide a few more minutes during the week are well spent.