A Word Of Caution About Social Media

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About the author:  David Lanning is the founder of Tweetalize and CEO of Galapagos Collection, Inc. David has more than 20 years of experience in the retail industry with a specialization in retail promotions and online marketing. Read more from this author...

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WARNING: Too much Social Media may be bad for the health of your business!

Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of blog posts and news stories warning about the perils of excessive time devoted to social media. To summarize, the stories warn that if you spend all of your marketing energy on only social media, you may not see the returns that you expect. And, as a result your business will suffer.

Isn’t that pretty obvious?

If I spend all of my efforts just on print ads… it’s bad. If I spend all of my time writing radio scripts exclusively… not a good idea. If I do nothing but blog… it might have a negative effect on my bottom line.

It’s easy to get excited and caught up in the newness of social media marketing. What’s even more alluring is the potential to reach millions of people at zero cost… overnight. What if your video goes viral? What if Oprah mentions your blog? You could become the next Facebook or Twitter!

So, what’s the answer? M-O-D-E-R-A-T-I-O-N.

And, the best way to moderate your efforts is through planning and scheduling your time. So, I’ve listed some of my favorite tools to help you start the new year off right and help you make the best use of your time spent on social media marketing.

• AgileZen – I love the simplistic, visual approach to Zen’s project management. The lean concept allows you to visually control your time, organize your thoughts and collaborate with others. A free version is available and I urge you to give it a try.
• Zoho – This is a great option for people who like a little more detail in their time management. Zoho is a full fledged system. The only disadvantage to this is that it requires a little more time to manage and less time actually doing the work.
• Hiveminder – This one won’t really allow you to schedule your social media marketing time, but is awesome for collecting and managing you social media to-do’s and ideas. It replaces thousands of little scraps of paper and easily integrates with you mobile phone.
• Google Calender – It’s easy, powerful and integrates with the increasingly Google controlled world. Google will send email and text reminders, mash with your Gmail and much, much more. And, of course it’s free.

So, just to beat the point to death, it’s not the time spent on social media marketing that could be dangerous. It’s not controlling how much time you spend on social media marketing.

How much time are you spending on social media marketing efforts?

Have you seen direct measurable results from your social media marketing?

Do you plan to spend more time devoted to establishing your social media brand?