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The New Stuff

Social Media is Time Consuming But Worth It

You ever see those books promising you will that you will have Warren Buffet's riches through social medial on just 15 minutes a day? Yeah, just an FYI, they lied. If you actually were involved on all the social networks and blogging, don't count on less than 3 hours per DAY, and that might be the minimum.

How did I come up with this horrid number? By experience. Let's look at just some typical stuff.

1. Read tech or industry news- Long form articles get saved. (15 minutes)

2. Twitter has multiple parts: A)Look over Twitter Trending topics to find out if there was a disaster, big announcement, or whatever that I might want to tweet about or blog about. B)Look at tweets from list C)RT ones you think followers will enjoy. D) Quick glance at regular stream to see if I can answer a question, thank someone for a RT, or whatever. (15-25 minutes)

3. Facebook- Look over topics being discussed in groups I belong to. Make comments, if appropriate. Look over your personal stream to catch up on babies, marriages, divorces, and food porn. Add a video or blog post to your business page, if necessary. (15 minutes).

4. Pinterest/Instagram- Pinning, liking, commenting, and adding your own pins. (20 minutes)

5. Snapchat Watch the snaps of interest, post your snaps, and comment (15 minutes)
6. LinkedIn/Quora- Look at notices, skim read the new stuff, congratulate, invite some for connections, answer a question, comment (20 minutes)

7. Blog Post- I had not forgotten the post. Actually, you could do this second, but for our purposes we will put it last. Write your content, make or find an accompanying picture, and then distribute if not done automatically. Respond to comments throughout the day. (30 minutes)

8. Youtube- You could forgo the Blog post and use video instead. Either way, you need to also view your subscriptions, comment, respond, and share. (15 minutes)

9. Instagram- Take photos, submit, hashtag, view other photos, comment, and follow (15 minutes).

These are just the top ones. If you belong to special ones, then you have to add those on your schedule. Of course, these times will vary, and if you want to stay sane, I don't recommend doing them all everyday. There are some shortcuts like using Buffer to schedule your posts. The only thing here is that if there has been a major tragedy and you send out an auto tweet, you will get hounded.So, plan your tweets, but also be quick to adjust the posting time or content if something major happens during the day. And please, don't use tragedy to try to sell. That doesn't go over well at all.

Other things that could add to your social media time is doing Google Hangouts or Twitter chats. They generally last an hour. If you want to run your own (hint. hint) set up one on a weekly basis.

A sample Twitter chat #smallbizchat


So, as you can see, it takes time to be social online, just as it does offline.