SOCIAL MEDIA WORM HOLE
Social media is just about one of the best prospecting tools that you can utilize in your online marketing strategy, except that of organic lead generation using organic search engine optimization (SEO). SEO lead generation can be a huge and profitable venture if you have a lead capture system in place that feeds your visitors into your sales funnel. HOWEVER, when it comes to warm contact personal relationship lead generation and marketing, social media is the great gold rush of the 21st century!
Through the use of personal profile development, fan pages, business pages, groups, and all the options that a person has to build their personal brand on social media websites, social media is huge; and no other social media website is larger than Facebook. With expected growth to hit one billion users within the next 2 years, it is a virtual mega-wealth of opportunity if you know how to use it properly.
SUCKED INTO THE WORMHOLE
The novelty of social media and Facebook in particular is that you can spend literally hours of your day on a social media website being continually drawn into the wormhole of social interaction. There is nothing wrong with social interaction, however, whether you are self-employed or on your job with 'nothing to do' (this is a whole topic of personal integrity alone), if you are not careful, you can see literally hours wasted in your day (this includes smart phone status messaging and responding too).
If you don't have a disciplined daily schedule, it won't take long before you're sucked into the social media worm hole and see hours of your productive day literally sucked out of your existence.
GET A HANDLE ON IT
Here are some action steps to take in order to make social media your friend in productivity and not the nemesis of your daily productivity.
1) Do a time audit of a typical day in your work week. Determine how much time is required for you to get your primary job done in a manner that is worthy of acknowledgment and praise, either by your employer if you are employed, or by your employees if you own your own business. If you are self-employed, have no employees, and are not accountable to anyone, social media could very well rob you of tens of thousands of dollars in lost productivity. Be honest in auditing your daily time spent using social media.
2) Once you have an accurate time audit of your productive day (the time each day that you are supposed to be making money for you or your employer), establish a specific amount of time for using social media for a) your business use, and b) your personal use, then stick to your schedule. You might find that 30 minutes a day of concentrated focus on building your social media presence is enough to accomplish everything productive that you want to do on it. If so, do not waste additional time in surfing your social media network IF you cannot honestly say that it is financially productive for you to do so.
3) Establish a systematic way of using social media. If you have a you have to devote to your social media marketing and stick to it. If you only have 30 minutes each day to invest in social media, do it with a purpose. Have a systematic routine. An example might be to:
- Start by turning off any chat feature that your social media profile might have so that you will not get distracted.
- Next, checking personal messages and respond, add an educational, encouraging or inspirational status message that engages your followers (the goal is to generate meaningful dialog for a specific purpose, i.e. financial success, personal brand building, etc).
- Take a moment to review your friend requests and add those you want to connect with. Typically it is a good thing to write them a short note to them letting them know you look forward to learning more about them and how you can benefit from one another through your new connection. This initiates action on their part and lets them know that you are not on your social media profile to waste time.
- Respond to wall posts on your wall, and request a few new connections that open up new networks of friends and potential customers.
- DO NOT wonder aimlessly through countless pages of your connections in mindless pursuit of distractions that keep you from accomplishing your personal and professional goals for the day.
When you apply some basic principles of personal responsibility using social media, you will find that you will free up several hours a week in your schedule and become far more productive in pursuing your personal and professional goals. Remember, time is our greatest asset, and how we utilize it will directly affect our immediate success, as well as our long term goals.