It amuses me on how black and white the crowds are around social media. It seems you are either a cheerleader or a hater. Social media is either the road to riches or a big waste of time. I look at social networking from a slightly different perspective–you are either using it or it is using you.
Social media, in my humble opinion, is simply people producing and sharing content. That makes breaking the barriers to being a publisher remarkably low and at the same time makes the chances of finding fascinating and relevant things even more likely.
The challenge now becomes the frequency, which presents attention and capacity issues. These are two of you most critical resources for business success in any tool, technology, or endeavor.
This becomes the breaking point in most social media love/hate discussions.
Attention
Most naysayers of social media label it a waste of time. Certainly it can be. Of course, so can reading, writing, and arithmetic if done in an unproductive manner. The point is there are lots of things we do that can be done in a productive or unproductive way. That is not to say that reading a comic book on occasion isn’t a valuable experience due to its lack of productivity.
The real question is: Where and to what degree do you apply your attention to optimize your profits-to-life balance?
Social media can only be a waste of time if you allow it to be such. The smart social media user is mindful of their objective(s) at all times. Setting clear goals for your attention is an important success builder.
Here are a few general objectives that I set my social media attention towards achieving:
- Tuning my followers into valuable content produced by others
- Engaging experts and smart people in discussion (learning)
- Scanning or searching for news and opportunities
- Looking for examples and sources for my content production
- Promoting my own contributions to my community
- Brand building
To really get to execution you would need to take a list like this down to another level or two of detail. You should also specifically develop a process for efficiently doing the required tasks.
This new level of detail (tasks) leads you to the next step–capacity.
Capacity
How do you get it all done?
Well, the fact is there are only 24 hours in the day. The trick is using them, not burning them.
This is where tools can help. Again, find a couple that you like and increase you productivity, not too many. In this social media game he with the most toys just dies–no winners.
Here are some of the social media tools I use to manage my capacity:
- Eavesdropper – discovery and listening (this is in Alpha with my company Kaleidico)
- Google Reader – discovery
- HootSuite – distributing content (time-released)
- Seesmic Desktop – managing and engaging community
When you are selecting your tools look for reliability and ones that let you leverage your time. This is one of the reasons I like things like Google Reader and HootSuite. They allow me to capture and process large quantities of information in a short frame of time. Then I can schedule an orderly time-release of that information.
One last parting remark on time-release before we move to flow, because I think the objective is often missed. Most of you community is consuming social media as a flow (the next topic). Therefore, if you release valuable information all at once, say 7:30 a.m. with your morning coffee you will disadvantage a big majority of your worldwide community.
That’s right, time-release is about appropriately serving your community–NOT just looking busy.
Creating a Flow
Now for the hardest part. You have to learn to switch from the typical “processing to done” that many of us learned from the GTD paradigm to a working the flow approach.
For more great reading on working flow you have to check out Stowe Boyd who narrates on /message. Here is one of my favorite relevant examples: 3 Life Meta Hacks: Erosion, Streams, And Piles.
It is critical to structure your social media attention and capacity in such a way that your are simply dipping into the stream (like a river flow) to listen, engage, and add value. Your social strategy should not require you to capture and process every item. It should be designed to leverage the ebbs and flows of conversations.
How are you managing your social media strategy or is it managing you?
Other great articles on structuring your social media strategy:
- Do you need to keep up with social media
- How to use Twitter at volume
- 20 minutes to Twitter success
- Improve your Twitter efficiency
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Want more information about Kaleidico's software or services call 866.667.5253 or visit www.kaleidico.com.
