A frequent concern is how people can leverage Facebook for social media marketing. It’s often seen as a kids site and nothing more than a simple social network. If that’s the case, then how come so many businesses are finding success there?
Many companies and individuals that want to leverage social media are holding back because they fear that Facebook just takes too much time – a limited resource for many of us. It’s true that it can suck you in and force you to waste a lot of time but it doesn’t have to work out this way. You just need to be a little aggressive with your time management, especially if you use Facebook to network for both business and personal reason.
Social media can be ridiculously addictive, but that’s no reason to completely avoid the system. Just because something takes up a lot of time doesn’t mean it should be avoided. If that were the case, men wouldn’t spend any time around cialis online women. Avoid Facebook all together and you’re completely missing out on opportunities to network and socialize with people that are important to your business.
Consider the time it normally takes you to network with people in other situations. Conferences, at the office, out and about while running errands. All of these things are interruptions in your normal routine that require you stop what you are doing and pay attention to that individual or group until the conversation has run its course – sometimes that can be a long time.
Facebook works so well because it is managed at your convenience and allows multitasking. You can engage people while doing other things that normally fit into your routine. Granted Facebook won’t completely replace your in-person networking, but it can supplement it.
Sorry, you still need to go to conferences.
If you’re still struggling with how you can utilize Facebook and what you can do to make the whole thing a lot easier just follow these tips to help you organize your time and experience a little better.
- Turn off email notifications in your account settings. This can be a huge distraction if your email notifier goes off constantly while you’re trying to work. You should have small blocks of time setup in the day to check Facebook, not repeatedly every time you get an email.
- Ignore/black all pointless applications and games – you don’t need them, they will waste your time as you try to find relevant updates
- Make regular updates to your status
- Don’t travel to the individual pages of people you follow, just skim the news feed on your home page for the most recent updates and interact from there
- Check your own wall to look for comments and use a set block each day to respond to peoples comments. Doing this throughout the day wastes time. Have a set block of “comment/respond” time.
- If you have a blog, use an automated service like NetworkedBlogs to announce your new posts for you. That way you don’t have to manually log into Facebook and make manual update about your newest posts.
The best thing you can do is to block out time each day for checking and updating your social media networking sites. Think of it as “network social hour”. People laugh at the recommendation but I’ve suggested that some people even set a timer on their watch to limit themselves. It works.
Some of us need that reminder to keep our head in the work game and remember that play comes later. It might take you some time to get acclimated to Facebook if you’re new so spend time getting to know the system. Facebook is a wonderful way to network and build leads with social media marketing and you’ll actually find that the less you use it the more successful you are overall.
