In the previous parts of answering the popular questions of ..How much time is enough time to spend in social networking…I outlined in Part One the reactions the ‘All About Me’ people have to using social media and in Part Two how the ‘Nerds’ over obsession of only being in the online social networks is resulting in them loosing touch with reality.
In Part Three, lets take a look at those who understand time but not the concept of how to use it to accomplish anything.
Soul Searcher
The third group of time challenged individuals are the people who fall in-between the extremes and are searching for which side they should set their course towards using. These people’s personal and professional quest is falsely driven since they see ..or more accurately described as, heard…these people on each extreme of the social media time scale as being very successful. These ‘Soul Searchers’ are the people I find easiest to convince or coach towards going to neither extreme of social irrelevance.
Taking time out of their day to socialize online is sometimes a chore for those who need social media but are not readily accepting it in fear of it being just a fad. They will tend to lean more offline since to them it feels to be more accepted by the business arena, but then are drawn to the socializing done online by those in their personal life. The constant jumping from online professional commentary to personal notices in the social spaces causes these people harm to both sides of their life.
The amount of time spend online for these people depends on what they do for a living, how secure they are in their social life and how relevant being online should be to either of these situations. The fact remains in order to be relevant socially or professional there needs to be some level of presence online. Being totally offline or totally online is becoming a rapidly shrinking way of life.
Grandmothers are for the first time are able to communicate with grand children..and yes, great-grand children, while retirees of corporations can be brought back into their previous workplace to consult the many young executives finding they are dealing with history repeating itself. All of this done without disrupting anyone’s personal or professional lives.
Effectiveness Rules
The key to determining the amount of time needed for those who are searching for how social media exactly works can only be determined by evaluating the particulars of both their personal and professional goals. Once broken down a determination of the amount of time to be effective online can be noted. 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 more familiar with the mechanics of La-La-Land tend to gravitate to spending way too much time online.
It’s important to understand the complete evaluation of ones goals can effectively determine the amount of time someone should spend in the online social spaces. 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 more effective socially while there. Constantly being ‘On Point’ with selling every minute or pitching a product in every social update starts to get stale with viewers.
The time needed to be effective in social media should be long enough to interact with the people who honored you with their presence. Reach out to those who make statements of interests and respond back to those who reach out to you. Being online LIVE to catch someone’s status report scores the most ‘social’ points and develops online trust. Not being online, or only there for a minute each week will eventually hurt the combined reputation.
There usually is no magic number of hours to spent online. As a rule of thumb two to three hours of constant monitoring the major social networks throughout each day will generate a solid presence online. More than 8 Hours each day can be of benefit if it is spent having full conversations and not just posting links to information the News Feeds have already posted.
However, for professional social mediaist, 8 hours daily is usually a minimum amount of time to spend in order to make headway into what they do for a living.
Choose your time wisely, but make sure to schedule some amount of time online. Depending on how fast you want to achieve your goals online and offline will be gauged by how time you spend online. To determine that…seriously…let me know how I can help.
