As a small business owner, I am constantly trying to figure out the most effective use of my time. On top of my business responsibilities, I’m a husband and father and I’m constantly trying to manage the chaos of my kid’s schedules as well as mine. In fact, I’m about to head out to my oldest son’s high school lacrosse game.
From a marketing and communications point of view, social networking (like Twitter, Facebook, blogs and LinkedIn) sounds like a great tool. However, it can be very time consuming to produce the content for the social networking sites that are available to small business owners.
So here are some questions I think you should ask yourself before embarking in social networking (in no particular order):
- How much time do I have to put into social networking?
- What do I expect to gain from my efforts?
- Do I have something interesting to say?
- Do I like to write?
- Am I willing to promptly reply to questions?
- Is the information that I write helpful to others?
- Is my time better spent calling or visiting my clients?
- Will the information I write lead to new clients via search engines?
- Are my objectives business or personal?
- Can I use social networking to promote the writing I’m already doing?
I send computer tips to my clients via email. I’ve also taken the step of posting my tips on my blog (www.getmyacttogether.com) with the hope that someone finds my information via a search engine and ultimately uses my services.
