One of the questions frequently asked during my chats with people who come to me for Social Media coaching usually has to do with Time and how much to spend with social media.  I always enjoy talking about Time and how it can help or hurt a person professionally.  I also found over the years that Time is a commodity many people born after 1976 spend away in the wrong amounts in the wrong places, especially in the workplace.

When it comes to answering the …how much time should I spend in my online social spaces?…question I usually answer with…how much do you have? From there the discussion and my coaching takes on the complex issues surrounding the person’s life, profession and goals in both.

I am breaking the explanation of the different levels of time bandits into a series of three blogs.  In this first blog I will briefly outline…

It’s Gotta Be About Me

If the person is one of the many ‘Gotta-Have-It-Now’ people I usually have to get them to understand the concept of Time before initiating any approach to dealing with the online social networks a professional has to belong to today.  Most of the time these people’s focus closely resembles a ‘Trapper’s’ approach to dealing with Time.  They run through their life setting social traps like setting up a Facebook account and a Twitter account thinking that is all they have to do to lure in people to socialize with or do business.

These usually are the people who are not totally committed to believing in what social media can do for them professionally or personally.  Interesting enough, this type of behavior is demonstrated in all ages groups in all industries.  Time to them has to be spent on themselves more than learning about others.  This is a very hard group of people to deal with since they their concept of time is not complete.

I tend to have to take these people by the hand and walk them through the social space arenas online to show them how interaction with people on a professional and personal level offer results.  It is not until I take this type of action they will believe social media has any value.

Effectiveness Rules

The key to determining the amount of time needed to meet both personal and professional goals is broken down into determining what amount of time is effective.  I have found many people who are not clear on the advantages of social media usually shy away from spending enough time, while those brought up in the wonders of La-La-Land tend to gravitate to spending way too much time online.

Only after a complete evaluation of ones goals can an amount of time be determined.  Overall, I generalize with telling people to spend more time in the place you don’t spend very much time in.  Then while in those spaced, offline or online, default to being effective socially.

For example: Golf teaching professionals are more comfortable being on the driving range..or golf course.  This is natural and where they need to be to make a living.  However, when a teaching professional gets online they want to take how they do things offline online and usually make the biggest mistake by providing unsolicited golf swing tips.  Then leave the online social spaces without interacting with anyone socially.

I set up programs for these teaching professional to show them how powerful being social online can be to drawing in people to want to get to know them better which draws them into hiring them for what they offer.

Another example: The people who find comfort in tearing into an EXCEL spreadsheet or discussing the increment advantages and disadvantages of HTML5 coding generally tend to shy away..if not complete avoid..offline gatherings with anyone who more than likely has less knowledge than they have.  I deem this behavior the “Dr Sheldon Cooper” Syndrome though many of these people are far from that extreme.

The time needed to be effective in social media should be long enough to interact with the people who honored you with their presence.  Being LIVE online, to catch someone’s status report, scores the most points in developing online trust.  Not being online or for only a minute each week does nothing to help build trust and will eventually hurt an unfounded reputation.

I have found that two hours of constant monitoring the major social networks through out each day is the very minimum for developing a solid presence online.  More than 6 Hours each day and there becomes a diminish in return.  However, for professional social mediaist, 8 hours daily is usually a minimum amount of time to spend in order to make headway in what they do for a living.

Choose your time wisely, but make sure to chose some amount of time.  Depending on how fast you want to grow online and offline will depend on your mission.  For that…let me know how I can help.

I’ll be back to talk more about how to deal with the Online Addicts in Part Two..stay tuned!!