Overwhelmed with social networking

Q:  I've been to several teleclasses on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, and everything seems so time-consuming.  Is there a way to participate in social networking without spending all day on that task?

Lois

A:  Hi Lois–Great question!  I initially avoided social networking for exactly that same reason.  However, here are a couple of hints I have to help you make social networking more manageable:

1.  Discover what platforms are used by your target market.  If your target market is found primarily on Linkedin and Twittter, forget about Facebook.  How do you find out what they're using?  Ask them!

2.  Set a time limit.  It's easy to get so caught up in responding to people or reading their updates that an entire morning has passed before you realize it.  Set a time of some sort so that you spend no more than 15-30 minutes on social networking per day.

3.  Ping.fm.  Set up an account at Ping.fm so that when you do a status update, it appears on all of your social networking sites.

4.  Twitter Management.  There are two options here  — TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop. I prefer the latter, as it crashes less on me and I can manage both Twitter and Facebook from it.

5.  Automate your Tweets.  Set up an account at TweetLater.com to help you set up Tweets in advance to post at a later date.

6.  Repurpose your updates.  Attach your blog, ezine, and your EzineArticles.com account to your Twitter account to update your followers when something is published through one of those mediums.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither are social networks.  Network each day consistently for a short amount of time and you'll begin to see results.

Got an Internet Marketing question?  Ask it here: AskDonnaGunter.com.