Doesn't blogging & social media take up so much time?

I was speaking at a networking lunch this week sharing some tips and ideas on how to use blogging in one's business.  And the same old question came up "But doesn't all that stuff take a lot your time?"

Let's get this straight. All marketing takes time!

Driving to a networking lunch, spending 2 hours eating, talking and sharing business ideas, driving back from to your office, following up any contacts you met and sending them the info you promised - this all takes time!

Is it time well spent?  Well, hopefully yes especially if you met some interesting new contacts and some of those new contacts told others about you and your business.  Networking is an incredibly effective marketing tool.

So, why wouldn't using tools like blogging, twitter, facebook and all the other social tools out there take time to use, too?

And if the time you spend on twitter, facebook and writing your blog is used effectively - it will be time well spent too!

PLUS! anything you do online has the added benefit of being there forever.  Blog posts, twitter links and facebook photos can be found today, tomorrow and forever more.  So, yes blogging and social media does take up your time but before you use a lack of time as an excuse not to use these tools in your business, ask yourself how effective your marketing time is at the moment?

Comments

[Alice Elliott]

Marketing is always an effective use of time, and if you can be ultra efficient at it then that's a big plus in your favour. Automation is also a huge advantage, such as taking one step which culminates in many afterwards.

The answer is to block out time for marketing every day. Even the great entrepreneurs flying around in their private jets manage to do something each day. Without that commitment they wouldn't be where they are.

Another answer is to use the 'spare' time you have to your advantage, like recording your thoughts in the car coming back from a successful networking meeting ready for a blog or newsletter later, or sitting waiting for a client tapping in ideas into your laptop ready to process after the meeting – in this day and age you can't afford to stop or let things pass...

[Jo Bale]

You do have to be disciplined or you can Twitter your day away!

I was reading an article about this only this morning when your post popped up. Might be of interest as it gives you some ideas on how to manage your social network & streamline the time you spend on it:
http://www.abcarticledirectory.com/blogspot/streamlining-your-social-web-presence-in-6-steps.htm

Have a good weekend,

Jo

[Bruce]

Could it be that many of us don't have any kind of strategic small business marketing plan?

So we don't know where to start or what to do each day. And so we do this. Or that. Basically we throw mud at the wall. I did it for years actually. It's amazing that I managed to stay solvent!

Also, many of us freeze up because of all the possibilities. There are way too many distractions, especially online, that can eat up our valuable time -- time that could be spent on things that build our business. Karen, you make such a good point about how whatever we do online is there forever. So just getting information up on our site or blog or social networking site is a good thing, even if we don't see instant results.

And networking goes hand in hand with marketing. Seth Godin talks about gathering our "tribe" together and leading them with our expertise, knowledge, product, service, etc. It would be hard to gather our tribe together without first networking and talking to people to find out if they are "one of us."

Thanks for a thoughtful post Karen.