Social Media Is Free, Right?

Facebook is free.
Twitter is free.
MerchantCircle is free.
Foursquare is free.
LinkedIn is free.

Heck Social Media is all free! Right?


What’s your time worth? 2 cents?


One of the biggest mistakes you can make is thinking that Social media is free. Every second you are on the clock is ticking. If your there for fun, go on and let the good times roll, but if you are there to make a buck or two, you had better buckle down and get smart.


If you start to blog on a regular basis that is the cost of your time? If you or you have a marketing person or team monitoring unfiltered posts, who is paying for the time that is spent as they let the screen roll down looking or searching for posts about you, your company or your industry. Taking time to track is very costly if you put any value on your time.


So what are the real costs? Start with the opportunity to the business of just listening analyzing, participating and collaborating in the different networks.


It takes careful planning to roll out a solid program. Creating a twitter presence is easy. Participating, responding and building a brand presence is where the real work is. The actual setting up of the account is nothing. Same with LinkedIn, Facebook, MerchantCircle, the Nings, MySpace and all the others. The work really starts once your page is up, running and out there.


Set a time limit to do things in Social Media. Create your balance of activities not your best friends.


Finally make a social media program for your company where you have certain times of the day where you work at it. Like the old adage: Plan your work and work your plan.


Larson Notes & Satire: Social Media can eat you alive. You can go on to do one little post and 87 minutes later you are finally signing off. That is not because the sites are so hard to navigate but because you flitter from conversations that might not fit in with the task at hand. If your blogging, blog. If you’re answering a group post, answer it, and only do that. Do not stray from the task at hand.


There is a cost and the cost can be the time you need to build your business by using a tool that you started using to build your business.


So what about me?


Blog: 1-3 hours a day
Facebook: 30 minutes a day
Twitter: 15 minutes
MerchantCircle: 30 minutes a day
LinkedIn: 30 minutes a day
Nings: 1 hour a day
Other: 1 hour a day
Total: 5-7 hours

Cost: $150.00 to $840.00 a day


So is there a cost? You tell me.


Now the question is what is my ROI? That my friend is for another blog.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws/
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com/
http://ember.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate


P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.


P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.