Does social media threaten to take over your life? Are you feeling swamped with trending topics, Facebook updates, Meebo chats, LinkedIn discussions, YouTube video editing, replying to @ replies, catching up on your RSS feeds, uploading to Flickr… you get my point.
Heck – social media is filled to the brim with stories and analysis about social media!
That being said, social media is an undeniably valuable business resource. Online communities are now virtual water coolers where word of mouth advertising blossoms. It’s very important that you’re message is being shared amongst these communities.
But you also have a business to manage. I was terribly disappointed to find so few of the “top 25 communicators” on Twitter, but I also understand they are handling the actual business side of things too.
A small business owner may (or may not) have more time to devote to growing the business. They may not have the board meetings/interviews/revenue guidance meetings/etc that a big-shot CMO does, and so they may have more time to spend DM-ing potential clients on Twitter.
On the other hand, we have experienced social media users on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook who absolutely dominate the conversation (not necessarily in a bad way). Some of the most interesting people I follow on Twitter are willing to openly admit they are in-between jobs at the moment.
Maybe it’s because of the recession. Maybe it’s their choice. But the point is that they have the TIME to pursue it.
So where is the happy medium? Either you’re too busy running your business to grow it, or you don’t have a business to run, and have plenty of free time to promote yourself….
Your answer is to choose your battles. Depending on your business, you SHOULD be uploading unique media to sites like YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, your Facebook Fan Page etc, but does it need to be you? It sounds like a great job for a college intern to me.
But where it does need to be you is when you have real communication with your audience. If you’re going to be on Twitter, then it needs to be YOUR voice.
The great thing about Twitter is that it doesn’t require an extreme amount of time. You can respond to a customer inquiry via Twitter on your mobile device in under a minute while riding in the elevator.
Social media can take over your life, but it doesn’t have to. Just be sure you aren’t ignoring it entirely!
