You’ve heard the conventional wisdom: “time is money.” This especially applies to the myriad of free software applications, social networking sites, and other “hot new concepts” for promoting yourself and your business.
If you made a list of every “new,” “hot,” or “cutting-edge” web application designed to connect you with potential business leads or grow your net worth by growing your network, you could fill more volumes than the length of the Internal Revenue Code. How should you decide which of these deserve the investment of the only business resource more valuable than capital: your time?
The first thing you need to realize is that social media is only one aspect of your combined marketing and promotional effort. Put it in its proper place, and budget your time accordingly. If you spend only an hour per day, then this is an appropriate target.
You need to have a decent understanding of your prospective clients or customers if you plan to grow your business. With this knowledge, and a time budget, the rules are simple.
Rule One: Go to where the right people are. If your target demographic is the forty to sixty year old senior executive, MySpace is probably of no use to you. LinkedIn might be much more useful, for example.
Rule Two: Go to where there are a lot of them. In order for social media to be time-cost effective, the application you are using needs to contain a large number of users. Ever heard of a site called iYomu? Didn’t think so.
Rule Three: Go there consistently. A friend who calls you only when he wants something will not remain your friend for very long. The friends and associates with whom you spend small amounts of time consistently are the ones you will, for the most part, maintain as friends. The same is true of your virtual social networking associates.
Rule Four: Be coherent and focused. Think of social media as a twenty-four-seven cocktail-hour networking event. The purpose is to work the room and to stay on message, generating interest as quickly as possible with as many people as possible while staying focused on your goal of building goodwill by spreading the message about who you are and what you do.
Lastly, if learning all this seems like it might not be time-cost effective, you can always retain a professional to help you integrate your social media exposure into your existing marketing mix. The folks at CoconutWater can help you with that. Just drop us a line.
Tags: cost benefit, facebook, free media, iYomu, Marketing Mix, MySpace, Social Media, time is money, time management, Twitter
