Spending time each day needs to be the focus of your time. The amount of time you spend on social media is dependent on where you are in your social media learning process. Here are some of the processes that I went through as a part of my learning. Pay attention to the highlighted areas to get a sense of how much time is needed at a minimum to be successful with social media.
Learning how to use Social Media Sites
Your time spent on social media platforms will be a lot more int the beginning and really should be so that you find comfort in know what to say and how to create interesting conversations. Learn from people who have a lot of followers or who post interesting content. Your main goal is to learn who the great people are and what they talk about. Start with 1-2 platforms in the beginning and try to spend 1-2 hours looking and searching people you want to follow.
Create a Plan
Talk to people who work with these platforms, especially people who use it directly at their work site. This way, you will begin to learn how these channels work and/or don’t work for companies. Take some time to work up your plan and don’t be afraid to seek out information online or in person. Take 1 month and create a plan that fits your needs. Start small and grow your plan over time with new goals and objectives. Make sure you also decide on some tools to use to analyze your activity and assist you with posting information on sites. Some familiar tools are Hootsuite and Tweetdeck.
Execute your Plan
Start spending 1-2 hours a day and execute your plan. Schedule time throughout your workday, (Example check site at 8:00am, 10:00am,12:00pm, 2:00pm and 4:00pm. Also, check out your social media platforms in the evening too. Track the activity that is occurring with respect to your posts and people’s replies.
Refine your Plan
Take 2 hours and refine your plan after a couple of months, and determine what processes are working well and which processes are not working well. Two months is really fast and it may take a little longer. My only point here is that people who work with online marketing and social media platforms in particular are always updating their plans and processes as they learn more and more each day.
Execute your Plan
By this time, you have a new set of processes and some new goals. Continue to execute and try new processes. It is the best way to learn how to work with social media sites. Spend 1-2 hours each day with these new processes and execute your plan. Be consistent and try to work on your initiatives each day if possible. This way people will start to see your posts and will start gaining respect for your work.
Summary
The number of hours listed above is the minimum amount needed if you are going to learn how to be effective on social media sites. If you want to accelerate your learning time, I would suggest spending additional time at night or before work and learn. The best part about social media is that an audience is always online. In addition, once you post content on social media platforms, the information can be read by anyone and on some platforms like Twitter, you may see some instant responses.
Social Media takes time to learn and execute. I highlighted the time above so you get an idea of the investment you need to make. Is Social Media right for every company? – Check out an earlier post and use this information to make sure you are ready to take on this initiative with respect to spending time on social media.
Picture via Alan Cleaver
Read more: How Many Hours Should My Organization Spend on Social Media?