Social Media Marketing: Are You Wasting Your Time?

Submitted by Richard Dewick on Fri, 18/04/2008 - 18:28.

Marketing

social media marketing: are you wasting your time?

If you own your own business then you're always thinking of ways to gain new clients or customers and how to spread the word. One of the best ways is via Social Media Marketing (SMM). You can get your business in front of those people you most want to target and converse with them in ways no other medium can.

But, it's also one of the biggest wastes of your valuable time. Due to its' natural tendency to make you play the game and chase the numbers SMM can distract you from what's important.

Technology provides us with more opportunity, more opportunity to waste time.

"Oh I got 100 maybe 1,000 or more visitors to my site yesterday from Digg, what a triumph, wait til I tell my colleagues."

Whoopie do well done you! All that time sending shouts really paid off. All those messages on other social sites got so much attention for your site.

Are you chasing Diggs or votes on sites that only serve to test your bandwidth limit on your hosting package. At the same time are you on Facebook, Linked In, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Furl, Twitter, Sphinn or forums trying to spread the word?

Do you find yourself still on these social sites maybe 2 hours beyond the time you originally allocated to the task?

It's all too easy to get sucked into marketing your business using social media but don't forget that all the time you're being social, the clock is ticking.

Don't get me wrong, the whole idea of SMM is to be social and to give to receive and all those votes you're giving other people might prove valuable. But I know myself that if you're spending large amounts of time socialising, then the real work isn't getting done.

You spend so much time trying to attract attention this way that you miss the real point. The real point of SMM is to converse with those you are trying to target. Those that will return again and again or will actually take things one step further and contact you for work.

If you find yourself caught up in the social whirl then stop and think:

What am I doing today that will earn me money.

SMM is important for any company but needs to be channeled in the right direction and mustn't get in the way of paying work.

In my follow up post, Optimize Your Social Media Marketing, I'll point out what social sites are out there whilst choosing the best ones for your niche and then prioritising your marketing to maximise the ROI of your time.

Image courtesy of Arrigo Ceramista

Richard Dewick's blog

SMM

Submitted by Patricia Skinner on Fri, 18/04/2008 - 18:54.

Valid points Richard. I noticed last week that although my traffic from Stumbleupon has fallen off drastically, the length of time visitors stay on my site has also gone up satisfyingly, meaning that the stumbles were poorly targeted anyway. One interested visitor is worth a hundred who are looking for something else....

ROI with SMM

Submitted by Richard Dewick on Fri, 18/04/2008 - 19:27.

Hi Patricia, very true, quality over quantity as always. Something I will pick up on in my follow up post.

Two Thumbs Up!

Submitted by Web Success Diva on Sat, 19/04/2008 - 01:06.

After spending much of my 10 years experience in corporate/company marketing departments and consulting - this is the reality that most people don't get. Most of the online community keeps jumping on the latest social media bandwagon - but none can tell you the direct link to ROI or profitability. Without these numbers, you're really just shooting in the dark.

The Caveat is that social media can be significant for branding, but even that is up for argument in some arenas.

Great post!

Maria :-)

I couldn't agree more with

Submitted by Tyler on Sat, 19/04/2008 - 12:59.

I couldn't agree more with your statement about social media is all about being social. If you don't interact and engage on a personal level, you are wasting your time.

The Bottom Line

Submitted by Richard Dewick on Sat, 19/04/2008 - 13:37.

Thanks Maria, the bottom line is ROI but as you say people forego this for the sake of keeping up with the latest trend without investigating what's behind it. I don't want to go into too much detail as my follow post will take these points further but like anything you have to get value out of any marketing you do whether online or not.

SMM is all about the social Tyler yes, participate and engage or be ignored.

I hope to see you two on here again soon :)

Clicking - How hard is it to hardwire an automatic click?

Submitted by Janine Flynn on Sat, 19/04/2008 - 13:39.

I read this post, so very accurate, mentally nodding and agreeing. Then saw your latest recommendation and because it's photography and it sounded interesting, I clicked on it. As the page was loading, the thought 'how does this relate to business?' crossed my mind.

And what had I just been reading about SMM? Back to work lol!

regards, Janine

Wasting Time

Submitted by Kristen on Sat, 19/04/2008 - 14:15.

Great post! You are so right! I often find myself blogging, Stumbling, Sphinning and spending hours reading and at the end of the day I have to ask myself, "did I make any money?" But in the end the networking will pay off and I am already starting to see the benefits of the countless hours of socializing with media.

SU Grid Layout

Submitted by Richard Dewick on Sat, 19/04/2008 - 16:55.

@Janine Stumbleupon's new grid layout doesn't help those people easily distracted, the juicy images that abound on a persons page really temp just one more click!

@Kristen Glad to hear you're reaping the benefits of SMM and channelling your time to good effect.

thanks for writing this

Submitted by Montreal Social media on Mon, 21/04/2008 - 20:52.

thanks for writing this post, it's not always easy to measure the ROI of social medias. I think that we need to determine goals first and then choose ways to hit them, SMM could easily become one of the strategy chosen depending of our needs as well as SEO, SMO or PPC.

Turned off my Digg account

Submitted by Arnie on Tue, 22/04/2008 - 01:33.

The best thing I ever did was shut off my Digg account. I gained a few hours a week and after 6 month have never noticed any negative impact on my site or my business.

Realization

Submitted by Richard Dewick on Tue, 22/04/2008 - 12:55.

@Montreal Social Media and Arnie

Goal setting is one part of the mixx you need to get right before socializing, without them you'll end up with a Digg account like Arnie's that just burns your time away with nothing to show for it.

TIME IS MONEY

Submitted by jackwelsh on Fri, 04/07/2008 - 07:07.

i don't think so i am wasting my time in the marketing as the matter of fact we have got professionals and skilled personal in there and the amount to strategies they use is show stopping.
=============================================
Jack
Social Media Marketing

wake up call

Submitted by The Baldchemist on Sun, 13/07/2008 - 07:01.

Well said and well pointed out! "what am I doing today that will make me money". ha ha so very true.
Thanks so much for the wake up call. The Baldchemist

Save Time with a Virtual Assistant

Submitted by Steve Atlas on Tue, 15/07/2008 - 14:17.

This is an interesting article suggesting that web entrepreneurs should be careful weighing the gains from social media marketing against the time spent engaging it. One way to meet your objectives without spending a lot of time on the task is to hire a virtual assistant. In today's global marketplace, it is possible to work with a low-cost, yet reliable professional to become more productive.

Edited by admin

Virtual time saver

Submitted by Richard Dewick on Tue, 15/07/2008 - 14:42.

Thanks for the comment Steve and from what I've heard a virtual assistant can save you time. I've not needed one yet but have had good feedback so far from associates who have.

Have you employed a virtual assistant? Did it work for you? I'd love to hear.

Social Media means just that ... social

Submitted by Brisbane Marketing Consultant on Tue, 05/08/2008 - 07:03.

Thanks for a great post. It's important to to use a social medium for a business purpose and expect results. Ask yourself, if you were in the market for a product or service would you look for it on Digg?

Are we doing the right thing?

Submitted by Roger on Fri, 13/03/2009 - 11:24.

I have many sites and one of them is nothing to do with a lot of traffic but only a few productive visits. Someone submitted it to SU and I had couple thousand visitors with 100% bounce rate. I think that is just wastage of the bandwidth and nothing else. I think we'll have to choose our sites wisely to reveal them for social media or not.

No Such Thing As Bad Traffic

Submitted by Richard Dewick on Fri, 13/03/2009 - 19:18.

Hi Roger, there's no such thing as bad traffic really. Traffic to a site is great in the eyes of the search engines and especially if it's coming from a niche related site or keyword link. 100% bounce rate isn't great though, was the review in SU misleading or is your site doing all it can to get people beyond the landing page?

Roger, Are you serious?

Submitted by Vanessa on Tue, 17/03/2009 - 21:39.

@Roger, are you serious about your traffic? I think you are very lucky that you have traffic because we are always thirsty for that. I always start a lot of traffic campaigns to drive traffic, I think we purchase bandwidth for our traffic. It is not only about selling our products but a good position in eyes of search engines.

Nice Read of Common Sense

Submitted by Michiel Van Kets on Mon, 06/04/2009 - 14:34.

What a nice breath of fresh air. The whole SMM scene is into hype since they got numbers to show for their growth towards google. Which is a rather pointless comparison; those are 2 totally different media, techniques and markets.

valuable info

Submitted by Virtual Gamer on Thu, 16/04/2009 - 20:46.

It really didn't cross my mind that social media marketing can actually be harmful to my business. Thanks for sharing this info.

@Arnie, You are very right

Submitted by Allan on Mon, 22/06/2009 - 19:41.

@Arnie, You are very right because I am not using Digg as well. Results are the same because my decision didn't leave any negative impact on any of my sites. I think it is just wastage of time to spend all the valuable time on all those sites. It might be good to pick a few of them.

Yes, it is the customers who

Submitted by Henal Patel Carmine on Sat, 04/07/2009 - 06:10.

Yes, it is the customers who are going to come back and spend money you need to be aiming for so the amount of visitors to your site is irrelevant, it is quality not quantity that is important for any business.