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04.22.10 Using Your Time Wisely To Network Socially  By Jay Baer Social media isn't inexpensive, it's different expensive. In the QA portion of recent speeches, I've frequently been asked "this is great, but doesn't it seem like it will take a lot of time?" Yes. It. Will. Succeeding on the social Web requires daily participation. Whether it's brand reputation management, PR and influencer outreach, customer service and social CRM, interacting with fans on a brand community, or just creating content that builds thought leadership - it all takes time. Fundamentally, there are no shortcuts in social media, because the entire premise is that you're interacting with customers one on one (or one on few). That is of course more time consuming than reaching hundreds, thousands, or millions of customers at one time with a paid advertisement. How could it not be so? The only way America is even keeping its head above the global water line is by squeezing every last drop of productivity out of all of us. Please raise your hand if you're working fewer hours these days than you did five or ten years ago. Exactly. Unless you're somehow on Justin Bieber's management team, you're probably busting your hump like never before, tethered to the world by the iWhatever. So, I recognize that you probably don't have the time to really commit to social media, and neither does anyone on your team. So, you have two options. Social Media Time Management First, you have to make the time. How much time do you spend sending, reading, and receiving emails each day? One hour? Two? Well guess what? 15 years ago we didn't spend any time on email. But, we made the time to include it in our lives, because the net benefit was incredibly positive. The same is true of social media. You and your compadres in your organization need to perform a serious audit of how you're spending every minute of every day (especially in the marketing and customer service arenas). You need to do whatever you can to tie behavior and time utilization to business results. Then, you need to jettison what you're doing that isn't a clear net positive, and use that newfound time vacuum to fit in daily social media participation. I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends The second option is to grow bigger shoulders. Of course, you need to do a lot of the social media tasks within your four walls. There are exceptions, but it's difficult to outsource your voice. But, maintaining a hand on the steering wheel of your persona does not mean that you need to have a stranglehold on every social media facet like a dog on a pork chop. Couldn't you have a lot more people in your company creating content? Maybe they aren't great writers. But video blog posts? Consider your fans - your advocates - your 1%ers - your volunteer marketing army. Couldn't you use them more effectively? Couldn't you "promote" some of them, and have them help you monitor and respond to blog posts, create Facebook status updates, and so forth? Continue reading this article.
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