Avoiding the Black Hole of Social Media

People frequently tell me that they are afraid to start using social media to promote their business because they might get sucked into the black hole of spending too much time on social media.

For example, someone said to me: “I know I should be using social media to connect with people for my business. But I hear horror stories of people getting sucked into spending three to four hours a day on this — and I don’t have that time available!”

YOU HEARD IT HERE: Social media is not a black hole that you will be sucked into and lose all knowledge of time passing IF — and this is an important IF — you know best practices, have a very specific strategy that you are following, and are disciplined (or use an alarm clock to keep you disciplined).

In fact, once you have a Twitter account, LinkedIn account and Facebook (business) page account set up effectively to promote your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and you have learned how to share information with your connections on these three sites, you can allot 30 minutes a day in 10-minute segments to keeping up with your social media outreach. (Obviously this doesn’t count blogging time if you blog.)

But if you don’t know what you are doing and you don’t have a strategy, social media can suck you into a black hole of aimlessly wandering around as Alice did in Wonderland, trying to figure out which end is up.

This is why at Miller Mosaic Power Marketing we believe that our most important service is effectively setting up people on social media sites with a specific strategy for their business (one size does NOT fit all) and the knowledge of how to use social media in a limited amount of time per day.

If you want help doing this, check out our social media strategy package now.

(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) and her business partner Yael K. Miller (@MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter) are committed to taking the mystery out of social media so that individuals and companies can utilize the power of social media to attract more business.

Tagged as: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter