How are you managing your Social Media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)? How much time are you spending on them? What tools are you using? We used to have e-mail to manage and now all these platforms in addition to e-mail. How much time are you spending on them and what tools are you using? Susanne Khawand Email Marketing Manager Retention at Symantec asked this question on LinkedIn.
This is one of the most asked questions these days! I recommend that the least one does is an hour a week. I suggest Sundays. (BTW, what day am I answering this question?)
Social Media is different than answering email. With email, it’s the traditional one-to-one form of communication. With Social Media you are involved in a one-to-one and one-to-many conversation. Even though I’m answering you, I’m aware that my answer might be read by people who I would love to connect with.
So, the minimum time I recommend is one hour a week. But, once you start to have some success with Social Media it’s easy to justify adding an hour or two a week to your schedule. I went from doing one blog post a week to two a week. That helps search engine optimization and it makes one’s blog more interesting for people to follow it.
The nice thing about LinkedIn is that when you answer questions all of your connections are told about it in the weekly email. So, LinkedIn can be very helpful. I love seeing the people I’ve advised to participate more in LinkedIn answering questions and joining groups.
Remember that Social Media is a two-way conversation that can include many additional participants.
(One also wants to use one’s time efficiently. So, I’m going to use your question and my answer as my blog post for this evening! I will link back to you, Susanne, because I would love to help you get to be more famous as well!)
I like to use hootsuite and converse to manage my social media activities.
Hootsuite is great for listening to twitter based off mentions and keyword searches. It also pulls in linkedin and facebook into the dashboards.
Converse is good for scheduling out your campaign messaging for specific peak times to reach the largest audience with your message. It is also handy for dripping out content to various social networks to be prominate in the lifestreams/twitter streams of your fans and followers.
Both are free to use and make my social media life waaaaay easier to manage.
So, to be completely honest, if I were to add up all my hours of e-mail and facebook together it would probably add up to 15 hours a week. I’m addicted.
E-mail is my main source of communication for business purposes and Facebook is my “playtime” activity for when I don’t feel like doing homework or am procrastinating.
Although I do not think that it is a good idea for a business owner to spend that much time on social media sites, I do think it would be healthy for them and their business to keep up with their updates, twitter, and any conversations they may be having with people. People find their answers through social media sites these days and it looks good if the business owner is very timely and quick with responding.
Social media is booming these days and it is perfectly okay for people to take advantage of it. It is good for your business, economy, and people. It allows different people from every corner of the world to communicate and exchange infomration and let’s them see what you (your business) has to offer.
As far as the recommendations David Wells said above about Hootsuite and Converse, I have never heard of them before and I feel like there are many others who have no idea that they exist. It would be a good idea to somehow make them aware that they are out there.
I disagree and believe one should spend more than one hour on social media, especially if you are trying to build your company and get your brand out there. The more time blogging, twitting, facebooking, etc. the more opportunities you are creating for yourself and/or company.
I know of people whose job solely is working on social media. It is time consuming, but certainly effective. I suggest 20 minutes a day, or at least if you write on one social outlet a day, make sure you link it to the others. The more exposure on the web, the better. Especially since technology on the web is so high-pace and constantly changing that if you do not keep up daily, and only weekly, you can fall behind.
I love to use many of these sites to get many of my questions answered. I love how many different answers come about these social medias.
I think that the suggestion of one hour per week being spent on social media is a good amount of time. People should rely on social media for feedback, advice, and new ideas, but it should not over consume you while having everything else on your plate to fill. It is a good thing to have someone from your company checking your twitter, facebook, and blog accounts maybe once or twice a day, but not too much time daily.
i would agree that social media is a huge part of our generation as a main form of communication. On average I use social media 1-3 hours a day. My way of staying in tune and in touch with society, friends and family is often viewed on Facebook. I also would have to say that as technology advances, access to social medias are made so much easier because we are able to access the social media and other websites on our cell phones which are most likely with us no matter where we go.
I also find that it is interesting to read and view other people’s posts on Facebook and have realized that people are more open with themselves and their life on a social media then they are in person. for example, i find more information out about a person through social media then i ever would through face-to-face communication or even email. Facebook shows at times the “real” individual as well as their interactions with their friends.
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i would recommend that people use social medias on a daily basis. especially as a communication major, social media plays a large role in our major and in our generation. Social media is a great way to stay in contact with and or in tune with our surroundings and society.
I think that the time spent on social media can actually be limitless. We live in a world where information is now accessed almost immediately after it happens. Someone is posting pictures or uploading a video or commenting a blog every second or every day so speed is the answer. The viral public can never get enough speedily accessed data and with this in mind you can always be online improving up-to-date information. And with a reputation as a website that has the quickest info on the web, why wouldn’t someone visit yours over a slower one?
I agree with what your saying, because I myself in Social Media use facebook and email mostly but these ideas that you bring about social media can be very useful for facebook, twitter, and etc. Social media is something we all use everyday, instead of just using it, why not add some unique ways of using social media and help your business or company achieve and you get the credit for it. Sounds like a fun thing to do for me.
I think that this blog has a very interesting idea to it. Should we really out a time limit on how often we use our social media devices? I personally do not think that there is a wrong or right amount of time that should be spent on any particular social media. I think that different forms of social media work in the favor of different people. For example, this blog mentions the use of LinkedIn, and that one should log on for at least one hour per week. But I think that the amount of time allotted to the use of a particular social media should follow with the stage you are at in your life. For example, I use social media (ie Facebook) everyday numerous times a day, but I use LinkedIn significantly less then that because at this stage in my life Facebook is the social media that is working most in my favor to get my connections made and communication across. But in a few months when I graduate I may turn to devoting more time to Linkedin to focus on my career and such. So I think the time spent on social media really depends on what is working best for you at that particular point in time.
The only forum of social media that I use is facebook. I’ve never been known for spending a lot of time on the computer, but on average I spend about 3 hours on facebook every week. Once I graduate I plan on creating a Linkedin account. I understand the value of social media, but right now I feel like my time can be better spent working on my assignments.
I have all three types of the social media platforms, however I really only use facebook. I use facebook probably a little too much. I find myself getting on facebook just to check it out everytime I log onto a computer. It got even worse when I got facebook on my phone and I would receive updates when any activity involving me got pushed to my phone. I would love to use linkedin and twitter more and I set them up just so I can have them if anyone wants to contact me, i view it as another way of networking. It has also been roumered that facebook will begin charging for their accounts. I personally know I will not pay for facebook and it will be interesting to see what happens to facebook if they decide to charge. Anyone want to start a social networking site with me if facebook charges!? We could be rich!
When I read “one hour a week,” I was a little shocked…at first i thought it was going to say one hour a day, and even that seemed low to me! I am an avid facebooker…I spend way too much time on it, I’m aware. However, I don’t think I am alone in this. Every time I walk through the library, I can count at least ten people who have facebook up instead of actually doing their homework. It’s hard to just spend one hour a week on it because you get the updates to your email that someone has commented on your wall, photo, or status so you automatically log in to facebook to check it out, and more often than not, write back.
I agree with Tiffany, if you are trying to get your business up and out there, you should definitely spend more time with social media (especially if your market is college students because on average, they spend a lot of time on these sites).
Also, it is so accessible now because like I said, they not only send you and email telling you any sort of activity that goes on on your page…you can also login to facebook from your phone, so you don’t even need to be in front of a computer to be involved!
I think that the suggestion of spending one hour per week in social media sites is not only too low but also impossible! I know this blog isn’t necessarily counted as a social media but I have already spent about 30 minutes reading the blogs and people’s comments on them. It is extremely time-consuming to be on different kind of social media sites or reading & writing blogs. I think that only an hr/week would be an impossible ‘goal’ if someone is really interacting in the social media.
I am badly addicted to Facebook (as it seems to be the case with most of us college students), and I hate to admit that I spend at least an hour or two on facebook DAILY. Just like Bobby said, it is a habit to log in on Facebook every single time I open my laptop. This is why I think that social media is such a powerful and fascinating tool to use for both personal and professional levels. It will reach millions of people within seconds!
I actually just read an article on Mashable and they reported some Neilson findings from February that the average person spends 7 hours a month on Facebook, just Facebook! The recommendation of an hour or two a week is already being way overdone if this statistics is anything close to correct. Which I find a little ridiculous, but when I add up all the times I get on Facebook or twitter for 5 or 10 minutes, it really adds up. Makes me wonder what we could do with all the time leftover from social networking if it disappeared for a week or two.
I do not think there should be a set amount of time spent on social media. If it is for a business, it should be enough to keep the pages (facebook, twitter, linkedIn, etc.) updated and current. Whatever amount of time it takes to get the job done is fine, as long as spending time on social media does not take away from other more important tasks.
I would have to agree with Alexis. Social media has become a huge part of every industry. We live in a virtual world so most of our days revolve around updating these different platforms on a day to day basis. This doesn’t mean we should surf around, but surf with purpose.
Thank you for another fantastic article. Where else could anybody get that kind of facts in such a ideal way of writing? I have a presentation next week, and I’m around the look for such data.