Social Media – is it a waste of time?

Last weekend I spent Saturday in the Drill Hall, just off Tottenham Court Road and amongst other presentations, there was one on time management. I think most people dropped off, but I found it interesting as I was listening to it with an ear for Social Media.

Amongst other things, it was said that the deliberate contraction of time caused you to complete tasks in the time allotted and all you needed was the time and space to not be interrupted in order not to be distracted, so that during that time, nothing else can get in. I liken it giving up smoking. In my case I was clearing an addiction and I cleared it by deciding to smoke at given times and then having smoked telling myself that I could smoke again, but at an alloted time. It worked for me… So it does with Social Media.

It all revolves around having a plan, even if you don’t have a plan for Social Media, you can still plan time to investigate with the objective of determining your plan. So where to start with so many ‘Social Media’ opportunities?

You have to start with planning your time. You are in business to do business, you must do whatever you do to stay doing business, of course. But your time is yours, you own it, you control it, what you do with it is yours. We know you will be more productive if you plan your time, so your first plan must be to plan in some learning time.

Now, in the case of Social Media, you cannot do much until you have set up accounts, accounts require you to complete a profile, and that is the first thing you must do. You also need to think about your personality and your voice – what you want to say. These should be easy to work out in the beginning – act naturally, and focus on what you already do! there is no need to suddenly become an extrovert party goer, and we er, don’t really want to hear about bowel movements… So this is as simple, at least in the early days as keeping congruent, say who you are and be who you are.

So the first thing you must do in terms of time is look at the media you fancy – twitter? facebook? linkedin? they tend to be the top three. Open an account with each.

By doing nothing, you will get followers and this may be odd, but it means that people have found you as a result of your profile and they want to hear what is going on… You perhaps do not want to tell them everything… You would not have time for that, but you may have a thought for the day. Start there, start with ease, start gently, but only in the time you have allotted.

You could easily allot no more than 10 minutes at first. However, you now have followers and those followers were interested in you purely because of your profile – look at them, they may be clients or even, prospective clients. You now have the opportunity to talk… You would like to talk to prospective clients…

Major social media applications have millions of users and are still growing fast, but everyone needs to start somewhere – you have to be in it to win it as they say. Social Media is closely tied to e-mail, which has already presented major challenges to professionals in time management. Like email, the skills required for Social Media are about keeping an appropriate focus in their work and life.

Meetings can wasteful if not managed correctly and we know that random web surfing or Facebook socializing can be productive, if you are achieving something you want.

The strange and ‘new’ thing for many about social media is its immediacy and to some this is a bit scary. I can take a photo in Finland as I did last week, upload directly to FaceBook and Flickr and someone in London has commented it before I have had time to look at it myself – now that is scary – but nice. It is great to get instant feedback. Online we are more real, more  transparent, connected, with both immediacy and intimacy. Key attributes of quality relationships—something humans crave at a basic level – and totally necessary in business.

I was talking to Dr Ruth Renkie at Kingston University recently she  asserted that as time progresses the Internet is becoming more human.  When we look at the key factors of influence – key to selling and business we can prove that on line is the very best place to be in order to get your message across.

So is Social Media a waste of time – I think not – it is the most compelling thing to do. You must engage, failure to engage will end up in failure, others will pick up the baton. It is why Social Media is growing like topsy. We have no choice but to engage, it is where the people are and none of us can endure failure.