Read More: 
Views: 4,565
| 
Comments: 48 
Skip Months of Misdirection and Confusion,
Implement this Action Plan and Gain Traction Fast!
Avoiding the Social Media Vortex; How to Market Online Successfully While Maintaining Time for Your Primary Business Activities
Are you finding yourself being sucked into the Social Media Vortex?
Many people find that adding online social networking to their business activities can affect their efficiency and challenge their time management skills.
Although social media is free for the most part, it is not necessarily true that using it for marketing purposes is going to be free if you consider that it can become a huge time hog.
We all know that business is about relationships. And marketing online increases our exposure and widens our warm market.
But with social media it might seem like you’ve gone down the rabbit hole into a wonderland of new information, experiences, relationships and business opportunities. Entertainment begins to wind its way into your business activities.
You might begin to feel overwhelmed to the point of distraction, following every interesting Tweet and blog you find, until your distraction outweighs your productivity.
As it has been said, the best thing about working for yourself is that you have no one to tell you what to do. But the worst thing about working for yourself is that you have no one to tell you what to do.
Here are some tips and reminders for you if you feel yourself sliding down that slippery slope:
Limit Your Marketing Efforts to Your Target Market
Once you have determined what your what your target market is, join the social networks where you are most likely to connect with these people, and join groups or participate in forum discussions providing value over promotion. Limit your activities to this market.
Keep it Simple
Start with just one to three social networks, so that you begin to build relationships rather than just numbers.
Stay away from the likes of Facebook applications and games, they are time wasters and can be addictive. Attend only the most interesting and applicable event invitations that you receive, for eventually you'll find you get several per week.
And budget your time in Twitter, YouTube, or social bookmarking sites, which can be an attention magnet as well. While it is very tempting to look at a dozen links, videos and pages, the next thing you know an hour or two is lost (although you may find an occasional nugget to use to add value for an upcoming post or video).
Of course it is cordial and builds relationships to respond to every friend request, @ reply or DM Tweet, and email, this quickly becomes burdensome. Learn to prioritize your response messaging according to contacts you have qualified as being in your most targeted market.
It's also tempting to check out every link you are sent, but limit the ones that you follow to those from people you have built a relationship with first. These can not only be distracting but even hazardous!
Use Tools that Increase Productivity
Do use social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon.com, Digg.com, and Del.icio.us to increase your exposure and SEO.Just be careful of surfing the always interesting content there, and if you do make sure it’s something that feeds into your ideas for your own content. Make tagging your blog to these sites easy using clickable buttons (plugins often provide these).
Learn about and use account management application sites such as Socialoomph.com (previously TweetLater.com), which can be used (free or paid for more options) to schedule poats to various social accounts.
Sites like FriendFeed.com and Ping.fm can be used to consolidate your postings, as can SocialPoster.com, to name a few. Twitter can be set to post directly to FriendFeed (I can't get Facebook to do that any longer), but I found that I didn’t want Twitter updates to post to Facebook since due to a much larger number of followers on Twitter, I create more updates on my Twitter account. It seemed it would be a nuisance on the slower paced Facebook to have my Twitter updates post there. The last thing I want to do is annoy my target market audience!
And as a side note, since Socialoomph.com no longer posts directly to Twitter for scheduled updates, you can post to ping.fm and have it’s updates posted to Twitter. There are also software tools that you can run locally on your computer for this purpose, but I’ve not yet tried any.
Listen
Remember you are in a relationship business first, which means your primary focus should be on your prospects, your potential customers or business partners. Don’t be a ‘false networker’ or just accumulate friends for the sake of gaining numbers.
Your most important skill when face to face, listening, carries into the realm of social media. Learn about your contacts, and find out what it is that they need. Spend just a few minutes a day perusing the updates of your contacts to learn their current interests and needs. They also may be posting content that you’d like to incorporate into your own, so bookmark sites that you’ll want to return to later.
Continue Writing
If your communication skills are lacking in the area of writing, or ad copy, work on that at least to the extent that you can be concise (yes, I do have a bit of work to do here 
), and keep your readers interested. Writing is not an impossible skill for someone even if they are currently poor at writing. I’ve seen someone not use correct grammar and spelling and yet write an enjoyable and compelling post! As long as you are enthusiastic, educational and/or entertaining, you’ll have an audience.
Writing a catchy headline is even more important than interesting content in a post. Headlines should grab attention and the post should be interesting enough to hold the reader's attention, but not overly wordy or disjoint. A great little tool is the marketing headline analyzer – it will rate your headlines for readers’ appeal – http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/index.htm
Just be yourself and let people get to know, like and trust you you while you get to know them and understand their needs, and if you master your social media marketing schedule, and you can’t go wrong!
Vicki Berry
919-676-6152 anytime
http://MLMTrainingResource.com
About the Author: Vicki Berry
Member Since: 03/28/2009
I'm a Distributor For:: SISEL International, LLC
Other Company: Empower Network
Industry: No Industry Selected
Primary Web Site: http://MLMDreamSaver.com
Great Stuff Vicki
Thanks for all the great advice. And also thanks for sharing the tools. But most importantly thanks for being a great leader!
Timothy C Burns
Great Subject - Awesome Content!
You've presented a very timely subject for me... and for many others too I'll bet! Well written and informative. Thank you, Vicki, for the pertinent and helpful info! :-D
Find What You Love And Focus Till Your Eyes Cross!
You are so right on Vicki, it doesn't take much for people to spend a whole day overwhelmed with social media. You gave some excellent tips! I will agree, find what you like and do well with and focus till you are reaping the rewards that you expect. Than add something new to build up. Balance is crucial, without it our wheel of life is bouncing down the road like a basketball!
I always knew you were the Social Media Genius
And you just proved it. You have added such great Value to us all. My eyes do not like it when I go in to the computer with out a plan to get out. And knowing I used my time wisely. This was a wise use of my time reading this post thank you Vicki
Your friend for life Juanita Waterman
Great Info
There is so much info out there about social media etc.. It was refreshing to be caught up to speed in one article! One Stop Shopping, I like that. Thanks, Vicki
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
It's another form of time management & part of that learning curve.
Many Tanks
I will be putting all of this to good use and "Write" away.....Zel
Disipline Is Key!
Thanks for all the great info on Social Media and also the reminder to be disciplined enough to keep on track and stick to our scheduled time management plan. Thanks for sharing Vicki, this was a brilliant contribution!
Time Management and Social Media
Thank you so much for writing this article. It helps me with time management. Every second in my life is precious. This truly brings out the leadership in you. Vicki, you put all of these social sites into perpective for me. I will definitely keep this article close to me. Thanks for the tremendous value. Your friend, Therese
Valuable Content!
Great value in this article from start to finish!
Alice McCarthy
Thanks for the Tips!
Time Management with Social Media Is a Must! Some People DO get caught up in all the Entertainment on Social Media and forget that they have a business to run. Dont Let Yourself Fall in that Rabbit Hole!
Great Information, Really! Thanks for sharing!
Using our time wisely.
Vicki, we all lead busy lives and your article is a great help to get us to use our time wisely. You are so right when saying that social media can hog your valuable time. Your tips give us many ways to keep us focused and on track. If we run down to many rabbit trails, at the end of the day we will wonder if we actually accomplished what we intended to. Thank you Vicki....you are the queen of social media.
Thank You Very Much!
This information adds so much value to us all, time management is definitely the key to being productive instead of busy. Thank you for sharing useful knowledge and great tools to utilize, but most of all like Tim said thank you for a great mentor and leader.
Your Friend For Life
Thank You All for Kind Words !
I so appreciate all your support! I often write things like this to help myself to focus. Even being used to social networking (and not really considering myself an expert by any means!) it's still a constant challenge staying productive!
Thanks again!
Can You Hear the Echo?
All I can do Vicki is echo everything that everyone has already said. Great article, with tons of content. Plus I love the added .gif's too. Should be a 'featured' article for sure. Thanks for your efforts, I know this has taken some time. You do rock.....
Vicki
Hey the engineer is showing and the great person you are.........love you Jan
Masterfully done Vicki !!
What an absolutely excellent article. Informative, well written, no pitches, absolutely excellent.
A pleasure to read.
Joyce Penner
You are SO Right ON!
This is by far the best article I've read on the subject of Social Media! It can truly be a complete waste of precious time when we don't use our time wisely. It can be so easy to hide behind the computer and never even call our leads or work our business. The results? Not a lot of fruit! Thanks for the tips!
Sabrina
You are SO Right ON!
This is by far the best article I've read on the subject of Social Media! It can truly be a complete waste of precious time when we don't use our time wisely. It can be so easy to hide behind the computer and never even call our leads or work our business. The results? Not a lot of fruit! Thanks for the tips!
Sabrina
Thank you guys!
I'm humbled by the wonderful comments and support here, thanks so much Terry, Jan, Joyce and Sabrina! Sabrina you are so right, it's so easy to let the rabbit hole keep drawing us in, while the phone sits idly by, waiting!
Great Article!
Good information Vicki. There are so many things that can distract us from focusing while we're on the computer. Our time is important. : )
Great Article Vicki
Most social sites, are filled with people just like us "Networkers." But some of those less experienced Networkers bombard you with add after add; with Join Me for this, New Lunch for that, and they use the site as a license to SPAM instead of a place to learn a few things from others who have travel the road ahead. They are normally the program hoppers trying to find a get rich quick program, then when they fail they give the industry a bad name. When it was their practices that failed. We all have our businesses and would to have new people join us, but when you focus on what you're trying to get from other people instead of what you can do for them you are just another piranha in that very large river. :-) keep up the great info
Right on Target
You can be swallowed up just as you stated unless you focus and set up some priorities. Thanks for the information
Social Networking Should Be Building Relationships
I feel Social Networking should be building relationships and sharing information. When I get an email from someone that is wanting me to look at a company, I immediately delete it. I have my own company and working with it and I am not interested in anything else.
In Social Networking, I think we can share good information for the betterment of all. It does not have to be all about business. I heard a quote and I think it is something that we should all ask ourselves in Social Networking and it is "Are we trying to impress or are we trying to Bless" This helps you to determine if it is about you and your agenda or about others and how you may help.
Helping others succeed will help you succeed. Most business can not be done alone but with the help of many minds focusing on a common cause leads many to success.
Social Networking is great because it gives you the opportunity to meet people all over the world. Without it, we could only hope and think but never meet. I love meeting new people. I learn from meeting people by sharing my thoughts and ideals.
I live in a rural area and am legally blind and the internet is my way of meeting and talking. It gives me a complete different outlook on life and people. We are all unique and special and that is what makes it fun.
Thanks for giving me this opportunity to share and hope I meet a lot more from this comment.
God Bless to all
Maggie Kress
maggie@maggiekress.com
Just be Yourself
I feel the greatest comment here is "Just be Yourself."
Thanks Stephanie, Jay, Frank & Maggie!
Yes, our time and our relationships are our key assets, and we have to maximize both to win - but using social media to build relationships can begin taking over our time, so being focused and disciplined is key. I think we'll always challenged by the resources and wonder in social media!
Thanks David!
I think we just crossed comments or I would have included you- absolutely being yourself is key, that's what makes us all unique! And there are always people who will be attracted to us, as long as we are positive and are willing to give without want!
Great tips Vicki
I certainly appreciate you sharing this info Vicki,
and I found the AMI tool useful as well.
Thank you,
Tim Henderson
Time In A Bottle...
Hey there, Great stuff Vicki...
Thanks for these tips. Yep, no matter how you look at it, there's only 24 hours in a day.
Gotta prioritize and stick with what works best. Too bad we can't figure out a way to bottle up time. What a thought...
We'll catch up soon!
Mitchell Dillman
http://mitchelldillman.com/partner-with-mitchell/
VORTEX
Great article Vicki,nice choice of words for this article I must say, as a auto enthusist, I think one of the engines offered in the pick up trucks is called a Vortex, because it has a lot of intake suction on the top end, to mirror the effects of the social media suction into other areas that take our attention away from our main purpose which is to serve our propects and customers with value. nice job.