March 31, 2010

Social media is a great tool for connecting with your customers and getting some free PR, but it takes a ton of time to implement an effective campaign.  How can you do all that if you're busy actually running your company?

Plenty of well-known CEOs really are the bloggers behind their blogs and the tweeters behind their Twitter updates. Think: Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson, Marriott CEO Bill Marriott, and former Sun Microsystem’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

So how do they do it?

“My schedule is unpredictable at the moment,” says Barry Sutton, CEO of Hellbound Wine & Spirits whose company is in the process of launching a new wine brand.  “I take every opportunity when I have any downtime to talk with users on our Twitter page. During this downtime I am swimming in a sea of information: business, viniculture, design, politics, entertainment, so I take the opportunity to post up information that is of interest to me [and] hopefully is also of interest to our customers and fans.”

Here are a few tips on how to manage your time running a successful small business and maintaining an active social media presence for your business. Remember: you want to be efficient, productive, and not waste your time.

1. Allocate designated time to social media. Budget in blocks of time for visiting your various social media sites. For some people it can be a three times a day: fifteen minutes in the morning, afternoon, and early evening. For people who require more time on their social networks for keeping up with customers, business advisors, and various industry innovators, fifteen minutes for every hour or two can be a good on topic break. Keep a timer and stay focused! It’s easy to get distracted by funny unrelated viral YouTube videos and Twitpics. Think of your social media time as little warm ups and sprints throughout the day that ultimately help you keep your business’ productivity up.

2. Figure out what you want to do on these sites. Make lists of which sites you want to focus on and why. While you are monitoring your social media sites for PR, customer service and marketing opportunities, you’re also extending your customer service and client relations.

3. Don’t make that allocated social media time all about you and your company. Spend some of time promoting the content and posts of other people to create dialogue and extend a conversation – just try to do it within your designated time slot!

4. Use social media with an end result in mind. Why are you updating your network? What do you have to share about your business? What do you want from sharing this information about your business? Tweet with new business and career opportunities in mind. Social media sites are destinations to showcase your expertise.

5. Hire a social media expert to ghost tweet and ghost Facebook for your company. “I outsource my social media needs to save time,” says Ted Pratt who operates financial ad network TakeAReport.com. “It saves me time and I benefit from experts from across a breadth of platforms. That way my reach is phenomenal and I don’t end up wasting time playing around.”

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Shira Levine, Article, CEO, social media, Business Insider

Join the conversation ( 6 )

• Patrick Mecimore 1 year 8 months and 27 days ago

  

  The answer to the CEO social media question is simple. www.CeoCentral.com

• David Wells 2 years 1 months and 25 days ago

  

  Great article Shira,I Think one of the biggest issues a lot of small companies face is finding the time to invest in social media. Without the proper time investment, social media can be a tremendous waste of time and resources.A great way to negate the time suck is by using the right social media tools for the job. I would have to agree with the Donna, in the fact that Hootsuite is an amazing tool for managing multiple networks all in one easy to see dashboard. Another great free tool I like to use is Converse by Socialize Your Cause( http://bit.ly/smconverse ). Like Hootsuite, it allows you to schedule out a lot of your social media campaign messaging ahead of time so you don't have to "live" on a particular social media site. It handles more sites than hootsuite and really helps me keep a limit on the "marketing" messaging being sent out through these channels.By implementing the two tools, I can save time on the "admin" side of things and spend more time engaging with potential clients and customers (isn't that the point of social media in the first place? =) )As for outsourcing your social media, be careful with this one. Most people are very adverse to the idea of ghostwriters and if you are found out, it could hit your brand very hard.Just my two cents. Keep the great content coming!-David Wells

• DONNA JOHNSON 2 years 1 months and 29 days ago

  

  Thanks for sharing these tips. Like the others, I like HootSuite for many reasons. I think some Tweets can be scheduled in advance by hired help. For example, my assistant schedules promotional Tweets of my weekly radio show. Cut, paste, done.I also agree with you if you are suggesting hiring someone to Tweet basic customer service replies and such. But other than those types of things, I'm not so sure hiring a social media expert is going to save time to a purpose.In other words, hiring someone would save me time, but would it produce results? I'm not so sure it would. I'd like to know more about Pratt's experience in this regard. What do his assistants Tweet about? Basic customer service? Repetitive promotional stuff?Or do they log into his Twitter account impersonate him, the person?I and my company are interdependent. We are connected, and when one speaks, so does the other. To hire a social media expert to ghost my voice means would require me to abdicate the responsibility (and the privilege) to engage genuinely with people who take the time to engage with me.Can you share more about how this "ghosting" work for Pratt?Thanks!dM

• DONNA JOHNSON 2 years 1 months and 29 days ago

  

  Thanks for sharing these tips. Like the others, I like HootSuite for many reasons. I think some Tweets can be scheduled in advance by hired help. For example, my assistant schedules promotional Tweets of my weekly radio show. Cut, paste, done.I also agree with you if you are suggesting hiring someone to Tweet basic customer service replies and such. But other than those types of things, I'm not so sure hiring a social media expert is going to save time to a purpose.In other words, hiring someone would save me time, but would it produce results? I'm not so sure it would. I'd like to know more about Pratt's experience in this regard. What do his assistants Tweet about? Basic customer service? Repetitive promotional stuff?Or do they log into his Twitter account impersonate him, the person?I and my company are interdependent. We are connected, and when one speaks, so does the other. To hire a social media expert to ghost my voice means would require me to abdicate the responsibility (and the privilege) to engage genuinely with people who take the time to engage with me.Can you share more about how this "ghosting" work for Pratt?Thanks!dM

• ANNE-MARIE FAIOLA 2 years 1 months and 29 days ago

  

  Another fan of HootSuite for pre-scheduling my tweets. I disagree that outsourcing your tweets and FB is a good idea though for two reasons: (a) no body loves your baby like you do. You will represent your company better than anyone else will (b) social media is about authenticity and creating a relationship. It's hard to do that through a third party. Anne-Mariewww.soapqueen.comwww.brambleberry.com

• MICHAEL WALKER 2 years 1 months and 29 days ago

  

  Shira, Great info. There are also some good tools that will allow you to update your various social media accounts from one spot. I like using HootSuite.com, but there are several other applications as well... http://www.walkertek.com/blog/2010/02/18/centralizing-social-media-distribution/ Mikehttp://twitter.com/walkertek