Are you Wasting Time In Social Media Marketing

September 5, 2010 - Last Modified: September 5, 2010 by FrankLee

There’s so much buzz around social media marketing these days that it’s not uncommon to find people who are just starting out in online business devoting huge chunks of their day to their social media campaigns.

However, if you’re just starting out as a site or blog owner, there are plenty of other ways you could be spending your time more constructively. Here are the facts:

Social media can be an effective marketing tool – AFTER your site is already popular. That’s when your viewers will sign up to your groups, or follow your tweets. Before then, you’re just another unknown quantity!
When you’re starting out – whether it’s an online business, a niche website, or a website for a brick and mortar company, it’s better to focus on creating amazing content, so that all those visitors you’re sending to your site find something worth looking at!
If you already have a great site, and you want to drive traffic to it via social media, it’s still going to take a lot of your precious time. There are plenty of freelancers out there who will start and manage your social network presence for you – freeing you up to do other important things to your site.
Automate it! It’s so easy to add a sharing button or two to your site or blog that allow visitors to your site to share your links on their social media pages. Why go to the added effort of doing it yourself, when you can have the people who are viewing your site sharing your information with their friends for you! If you haven’t already got a button that allows sharing, stop reading right now, and go get one! I’ll wait for you.
Many people who already have a site (and plenty who don’t) wind up wasting time on social media marketing simply because they have no plan. Instead of spending hours aimlessly wandering social media sites, draw up an online marketing plan. You could aim for 5 new friends each day, 5 new tweets, and to update all of your page and groups. That way, you can get in, and out, without spending ages on each site.
Choose your sites carefully. Not all social media sites are targeted towards the demographic you want to reach! Marketing trendy clothing for teenagers, for instance, on a professional network like LinkedIn is pointless – about as pointless as trying to market top level business consulting on a site like MySpace! Choose the sites you use to market your business according to the target demographic you want to reach.
Limit your time! Many business people I know bemoan the amount of time spent answering and sending emails. It eats into their productivity, and results in them achieving far less than they could. My advice is to set aside times – say an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening – to spend on social media marketing and emails. Then stick to it
Multitask. If you have downloads or uploads to do, do them at the same time as you’re on social network sites. Prepare an email marketing campaign and upload it to your email marketing software, then run it while you are on social network sites. If you can achieve more than one thing while you’re on a social network site, then you’re not really wasting the time.

Focused on the business

As I’ve mentioned earlier in this article, social media marketing can be an effective marketing tool for your website or business. However, that’s when it’s used as a supplement to all of your other marketing efforts, and when you’re actively focused on the business itself too.

No one I have ever heard of has ever created a fantastically popular blog or website based purely on the social media marketing efforts. You need to focus on the site first, and then on the marketing. As the line from the movie Field of Dreams goes, ‘If you build it, they will come!’

learn more about social media marketing

So by all means, learn more about social media marketing. Spend some time figuring out how it all works, and toying with a page or a group or two. But don’t write off what’s important now in favor of gaining fans on Facebook, or connections on LinkedIn.

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{ 73 Responses }

Lord James Cavendish says:

I manage thousands of affiliates, all earning the best incomes and I am also the Chief Executive of a UK based International Ready Built Website Company and I love this post. I don’t have a journalism degree, but I do have an English degree and I am writer by passion and by trade. I can’t tell you how often I am infuriated by people who fail at writing but think they are great at it.
Mark says:

FrankLee, I have found that focusing specifically on social media platforms that have both large followings and built in search engines like Twitter, StumbleUpon, FaceBook and LinkedIn help a lot when it comes to bringing in targeted visitors to your site. And you are definitely right about automating it. If you don't, you will spend (or waste) all day bringing in half-targeted visitors. Thanks, Mark
Louis Trombley says:

It's so refreshing to see an analysis of social media that isn't entirely driven by hype. I totally agree with your point that social media isn't a cure-all, and that it really can only be an effective tool once you've established a presence and made your site relatively popular to begin with.
Usama says:

Social media marketing is the most useful outlet on the internet. If you grow up on social media, you can become huge just like that. Thanks.
Joy says:

We realized months ago that we were spending too much time and resources worrying about what others were doing and we were not doing for Social Media. I like that you said we should wait till we are popular then others will follow.
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Joy! It is nice to hearing your comments. Rephrase what John Reese said in his recent email he said It is great to use social media to SYNDICATE content. I think he has put it a most simplest form. When we become more popular, the social media effect expands geometrically.
Tom Guard says:

I don't think it's a waste of time at all. Much of the traffic to my site comes from social media.
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Tom, Thanks for your comments! No, Social Media does not waste our time if we can see a clear ROI there. Just most people spend too much time on it than they should and then neglect other important part of the business like product creation and other traffic generation methods.
ZK says:

Wasting your huge time on social media is stupidity. You should and you must maintain the balance in between your great content and how you promote that content. Because if you will be able to manage proper balance than only you will be able to get the recognition.
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi ZK, Thanks for your great comments. It is so true that we have to keep our main focus on content creation, traffic generation, and conversion. That is why it is VITAL to have a plan to work on consistently. And we need to improve the plan continuously to yield better result with the time we invest. Without an action plan can lead us to no where easily. The old saying "If we fail to plan, we plan to fail." :-)
Laura Barros says:

I agree with you. I have my blogs for quite sometime and they are not well established yet because I spend too much time on Facebook, Facebook Fans, etc. I like to interact with people and I end up wasting my time liking, commenting and adding friends instead of spending time writing good content.
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Laura, It is a good learning experience. Leverage that experience and turn it to your own advantage. You are ahead of the social media game than most other people.
  - ZK says:
    
    Laura ... your theme and your niche also demands more and more social networking, if you want to get the success.
Tinh says:

Social media marketing contributes to 40% of my total revenue and it is worth to give it a try, it is not a waste of time from my side LOL
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Tinh, Thanks for sharing your numbers! Do you generate traffic with affiliates and JV too? Those could be other great traffic sources :-)
Trevor B. Reed says:

Great tips for those just starting out. It is so true that you can spend a lot of time on social media and not get very far. The best way to go is start with a goal and then figure out what you have to do each day to accomplish it. You may not end up where you thought you would, but at least you will be headed in the right direction, and hopefully you will not be as easily distracted as you would without a plan to guide you.
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Trevor, Nice comments! One method we can apply to our planning process is Backward Planning (or Reverse Engineering). Once we come up with a clear and specific goal, we can look at what is the LAST STEP we have to make to reach that goal. And from there we come up with a path backward and lead to where we are now. With that thinking, we can have a more holistic picture about how far between where we are now and the goal we want to reach.
TJ McDowell says:

I definitely agree that you can waste a lot of time on social media without seeing many results. We limit the time we dedicate to our Facebook fan page. Mainly posting interesting images from photo shoots and running contests. We actually get a pretty decent amount of traffic to our website from Facebook, but I'm pretty sure it's from other people posting about their sessions. It's great when your customers do your marketing for you =)
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi TJ, Yes, I agree the viral and the word of mouth effects are the magic power in Social Media marketing.
Aaron says:

Hi Frank, I've noticed that Twitter works well for some niches and is horrible for others. It is not a complete waste of time, but I don't focus so much on social media. When new blog posts are written, I of course have them posted to my social media profiles.. but I don't see how spending hours every day to get a couple of customers is going to make a big difference. What do you think?
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Aaron, I guess it all come down to the return on investment (ROI) issue. Our investment includes money and TIME :-) I notice some top marketers like John Reese and Eben Pagan have STOP sending Twitter while most marketers are using it. They tested using Twitter, and eventually they find themselves can make better use the time on other marketing methods. It is a matter of the opportunity cost :-)
Hieu Martin says:

I think social not waste my time. social is the best way to marketing
Justin Germino says:

I do heavily agree that Social Media will not bring huge benefit in traffic to your site until your site is already established. My site gets only about 500 visits per month from Twitter/Facebook + other social media sources combined which is less than 1% of my total site traffic. This is with over 6k Twitter followers and almost 1K facebook friends, Social Media is something you should have to brand your site/online persona, but it isn't a substitute for Organic Search traffic and good old fashioned link building/commenting...etc
- bryan says:
  
  hmm seems like even with those stats, social media marketing doesn't actually generate much traffic. I tend to think that blogs or people with huge followings will get a lot of people visiting from social media sites. Not to sound critical but I'm just making my own deduction based on your comment. yeah i agree with you good old fashion link building and commenting can't be substituted
  - ZK says:
    
    Social media will give you recognition ... if one people have thousands follower in twitter ... once he retweet your tweet and you will be able to expose to more 1000 people. But yes most of these are not your royal visitors
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Justin, Nice sharing! It is great to know that you measure your traffic sources clearly while most people don't. We can expect the marketing effect would be diluted on Twitter as more and more people jump on it to use. Imagine the more people you follow on Twitter, the harder you can really read every Twit. It is the same applied to our followers. They have less mind share to read our Twit. I guess Twitter or other Social Media like Facebook is just a mean to build our business. SEO, PPC, and JV are the great ways to build traffic too like Justin said. Our major goal is still to build an opt-in list and create value for our members.
Tia Peterson says:

Hey Frank, I think it's all about the appropriate strategy. If you're already popular, I don't know that it really makes a difference, unless you are using social media for a specific campaign. Social media is a great tool for getting new businesses or businesses who are new online out in the public eye. Obviously that doesn't come by just tweeting to an empty audience, it involves networking; much like email marketing is used today between joint ventures. Cheers! Tia
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Thanks for your sharing!
Lennart Heleander says:

Hi Frank Lee In my business, real estate, comes the client from search engine traffic and I working hard with the longtail system and direct keywords to cash the clients.
element321 says:

Great article! When I first started out, I spent so much time working on social media that I ignored other parts of my business and personal life. Now I spend my social media time on Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon. I do have a couple of other place I use but I do not spend much time working on those networks. Whats funny, I keep Facebook mostly personal but I do share my personal account with everyone and I get a lot of traffic from Facebook even though I really do not market my work on Facebook. I try and limit social media to 1 - 2 hours a day and that includes commenting on different sites.
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Element321, Thanks for sharing that Facebook experience. It is nice to know you got that extra juice from your personal FB. Yeah, I remember in the few years back I got myself overwhelmed by downloading ebook and reading emails after emails before the social media wave have arrived. Now the attention grabbing war is getting even more intense...we need to learn how to 'self-defense' our focus online.
Dennis Camacho says:

Hi Frank. Great post! You're right. Without a game plan, attempts at social media marketing can easily become social media wandering that leads no where. Looking forward to your next post.
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Thanks Dennis!
Rick LaPoint says:

When I decided to be on Facebook and Twitter, I didn't want to spend a lot of time with it; I simply posted things from my sites. I have received traffic from Facebook I would not have seen otherwise, and from my websites people are beginning to follow on Twitter. I see Social Media as one additional leg of an overall program. But then, I also see the Internet itself as just one leg of an overall business strategy. Every piece of the puzzle has its place. It is what it is, and it's pointless to try to make things more than they are.
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Rick, It is so true. Social media and other marketing methods (online / offline) are all tools to reach our business goals. That is why it is vital to write down our business goals. And when we review our efforts spent each day and each week, we know if we are getting any closer to our goals.
Kevin says:

sharing button is one of the most effective way to increase. I have seen good result after placing 2 share buttons where visitors can easily locate. "Social media can be an effective marketing tool – AFTER your site is already popular." Yes, i totally agree with you.
tushar says:

thanks buddy...your article has come up at a perfect time.... i was actually thinking that should i really use social media sites....now i can make the decision
Colleen says:

"...effective marketing tool for your website or business. However, that’s when it’s used as a supplement to all of your other marketing efforts..." Totally agree Frank. We are fairly connected with social media, but we are finding the lion's share of our business is still coming from search engine traffic.
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Collen, Good for you! I find JV and affiliate are also the traffic generations methods that we can rely on again and again.
  - Colleen says:
    
    We do not do much of any affiliate marketing in our niche, however, I can see your point. ;)
Andreas says:

New website owners and bloggers do not waste time on social media sites as these sites are the only sources that can generate traffic when no advertising or marketing budget is available.
Mitchell Allen says:

Frank, I most certainly have spun my wheels on the side of the highway. It's to say whether it has been a waste of time or a learning experience, since I know more, but still haven't achieved my goals. As a result, I can't quantify social media beyond saying my involvement in BloggerLuv.com has helped. You most important point is the timing of the endeavor. Really, what's the point in linking to your site if you have nothing for your followers to read or see? The trouble is, once you turn on that Twitter Radio, all you hear is advice to join this, do that, tweak the other and FOLLOW ME! :) Time to change the station or just drive to your destination in silence. Cheers, Mitch P.S. You and another blogger inspired my latest post.
David Bain says:

I'm not sure I agree with your statement "Social media can be an effective marketing tool – AFTER your site is already popular." I understand what you mean, but social media has the power to make an unpopular site popular. What I'd be more inclined to say is "Social media can be an effective marketing tool – AFTER your site is already populated with a reasonable amount of content and tested for conversion rates."
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Yes, I would say we need to have GREAT content and keep working on the conversion at our blog on top of any traffic generation method we do. They are all the factors that can COMPOUND the effects on our business. Thanks for your comments!
Pumama says:

I am staring to use social media marketing and have many question about it. That is Difficult!I need to learn more
Abhishek says:

Hi Social media marketng is a great way getting traffic.We have to give our time to it Thanks For Sharing -Abhishek
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Abhishek, Yes, it is a tool like a sword that can make or break our business :-) After all, we have to measure the ROI to look at our money and TIME invested.
Dev says:

Frank, Really Nice Post. You've shared some good tips Frank. Thanks for sharing this great Post. Retweeted... !
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Dev, It is wonderful hearing your comment again. Thanks for the retweet :-) You are awesome!
Ryan Biddulph says:

Hi Frank, Thanks for sharing the actionable social media marketing tips. Adopting a plan is a gem any blogger would b wise to follow. Set metric and hit them on a daily basis. This prevents wasting time. As you mentioned create usable content before hitting your campaign hard. Create a buzz with your content and let others expand your presence while you market. Ryan Biddulph
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Ryan, Agree. There is a good old saying "If we fail to plan, we plan to fail." Even though having a plan does not solve every problem, but it is a good way to tackle a problem and achieve our desired outcome. I have a blog post about The Goal Setting Worksheet for Internet Marketer at http://breakthroughinternetmarketing.com/the-goal-setting-worksheet-for-internet-marketers/ . It is a great tool to help us to look at the business metric. Once we come up with a plan, it becomes a model that we can improve it over time. Now, I start to write down the step-by-step for all the regular business process like creating a blog post or contacting JV partners. Over time, I can look at each of these process and IMPROVE it. That helps me to continuously improve my business :-)
mijie says:

totally agree because when u have account with social media it's help u to get more reader and viewer, when u create a fan page and evertyhing about social media then it's help u a lot to gain more trafic, confidence and sales is reward
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Heymijie, It definitely is a great way to create your tribes and viral traffic. To make the power more explosive, we can great a good bribe (free gift) to attract the visitors to opt-in. Building a list, great relationship with the readers, and profit are the ultimate goals.
The Bad Blogger says:

Social Media Marketing (SMM) can be fun and interesting to play with while you market your blog but it also will kill you and you blog if you gets too addicted to it. Just like facebook for example, people like my mum got so addicted... she almost forgot to cook dinner... can you imagine that... I mean if you got so addicted that everyday duty can be forgotten then it is something that's not really good. You may be writing your content but spend more time in SM.... you may be replying email to people asking for help but you spend more time in SM.... and if this goes on then you can close up your blog. Always know your limit and never goes beyond what you suppose NOT to go... that most people went to.
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi TheBadBlogger, You are a GREAT point! The online business are all fighting each other to grab our attention. We have email, RSS, blog post, podcast, Youtube, discussion forum, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter,....the list is too long :-) We got easily suck in there. The best advise I receive is to start our day with the money making activities like content creation (making valuable blog post or creating a new product), traffic creation (like contacting JV partners), or sending an offer to our list. Postpone checking emails, blog posts, forums, or Facebook UNTIL we finished a good amount of critical business activities for the day.
Akash Malik says:

Bloggers usually enter into social media to get some profit out of it, but they usually end up killing time. Social Media is fun and people usually gets addicted to it. There is no harm in SMM, but you should always know your ultimate goal.
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Akash, It is so true....thanks for your great comments.
- Hieu Martin says:
  
  Thanks akash Malik shared your mind.
Robert says:

I agree with you somewhat, Social networks are better once you're already popular, but it can also depend alot on which social network your using, for instance, my twitter account is alot more popular than my facebook one, i think over time the facebook one may become more popular as the blog is more popular, but for now people aren't that interested in it, so i dont really work on it
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Robert, That is true that we need to measure the ROI over the money and time invested. If you spend 5 minutes on Twitter that can create e.g. 2X result over Facebook, it is definitely worth more of your time to make your Twitter then Facebook. It is great to know that you measure and look at the result. Most people don't. They do social media blindly without having a clear goal.
Karl Foxley says:

You've shared some good tips here. I totally agree when you say "Instead of spending hours aimlessly wandering social media sites, draw up an online marketing plan." This goes for any part of your business, online and offline, you should have a plan, or even plans, in place... 'if you fail to plan you plan to fail'. :) Karl
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Karl, Nice sharing! "We can make more money, but we cannot make more time." - Jim Rohn Time is more precious than money.
Mike says:

I have another tip about social media marketing. Social media, as lots of people say, can kill or improve your business. Why it can kill? Because if your business is well known and a bad news leaks out, that bad news will be spread out quickly, as fast as a speed of sound :) so make sure you aim for yourself some basic understanding about the social platforms you are going to promote your business on. If you are on Twitter, I recommend you read the book "Twitter Power". If you're on Facebook, I recommend you read the book "Facebook marketing" or "Social media marketing: 1 hour a day". I really found myself not wasting time on social media because of those books. They save you time wandering around Twitter doing nothing. They save you time to find the right tools you need and how to be useful on social media. Really helpful books.
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Mike, Thanks for sharing your tips! It is really helpful if we can have an effective road map to navigate the social media journey. My daily principle on social media is very SIMPLE. I got it from the book The Science of Getting Rich. That is to create and give more value to other people than the money I receive. Give more valuable tips, tools, marketing test results, insights, inspirations, and, motivations to the people in the internet community...even free most of the time. That is how we become valuable in the market :-) "Always Do More Than Is Expected Of You" - John Reese shares the same view.
Tom Ranieri says:

Being a small travel company in Costa Rica I do a lot of the marketing on line myself and I have often asked myself this question. This was a great article and a chance to really take a look at how I might need to structure my time. Very interesting and thanks for the info.
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Tom, Nice sharing, thanks!
Hector Cuevas says:

Frank Lee.. "AFTER your site is already popular. That’s when your viewers will sign up to your groups, or follow your tweets. Before then, you’re just another unknown quantity!" That is a great point. There are so many different groups and pages on facebook it's insane. The power of social media comes into play when people know how you are and take action when you ask them to take action. Thanks for this great post Hector
- Frank Lee says:
  
  Hi Hector, Thanks for your comments! It takes time to build the trust with the visitors. Some people will not join our list in the first visit to our blog. People take around 7 visits to make a purchase in generally. But once we build our own branding in the market; it becomes another important assets in our business.

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