Social Disappointment

I hate to lose.

Whether it’s money, time or a game (especially when you have the best player, best record and home-court advantage), losing sucks.

I should know better by now. The growing litany of Cleveland sports disappointments should have prepared me.

Maybe that’s why I recoil when some expert suggests I spend hours each day on social media. Seriously, if LeBron can’t bring us a championship, how is Twitter going to deliver more business?

Well, for one, social media is growing at a rate rivaled only by the expansion of Charles Barkley’s waistline. According to a 2009 Marketing Sherpa report, companies expected to increase only two marketing budget line items in 2009: e-mail to house lists and social media. Spending for radio and television ads was being cut by 83 percent of those surveyed, while 60 percent were reducing print advertising.

Facebook, for example, has more than 200 million active users. More than 100 million log in at least once a day, and some 4 million become fans of Facebook pages each day.

But is that potential worth two hours of your day? Well, that’s the minimum you’ll need to spend on social media to see results, according to Matt Dickman, senior vice president of digital marketing at Fleishman-Hillard and the plenary speaker at the recent eMarketing Techniques conference at Corporate College East.

“Social media is people connecting with people through technology,” he says. But the ultimate goal is to “extend the relationship from virtual to physical.” Having 5,000 friends that don’t lead to an increase in your bottom line is not a business endeavor — it’s a hobby (and one best left for after-hours).

“If you’re not ready to spend two hours a day — and that’s every day — on social media, you probably shouldn’t start down this path,” Dickman says.

Dickman has quantifiable results for his own efforts; his 7,000 Twitter followers and 700 Facebook friends have led to a huge increase in his blog readership. But the PR world is different from our businesses, right? Yes and no. Dickman’s stringent minimum stems from his personal experience and from clients: The value received from social media is directly related to time spent.

Depending on your business and role, it’s probably unrealistic to invest that much time to reading and writing blogs or building and maintaining your online community on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

So how do you increase the time spent on social media? You must take on a “content mindset,” says Rick Burnes, of Cambridge, Mass.-based Hubspot, an Internet marketing firm.

Social media time commitments can be “daunting for people with a traditional marketing background,” Burnes concedes. Creating a content mindset can lower that barrier, however. “Go through your day thinking about how you can take something that you’re already doing and share it with more people by turning it into content,” he says.

Instead of reinventing the microprocessor every time you face a blank blog screen, you could instead turn relevant e-mail discussions into your blog posts, for example.

Take pictures and video at events that can be shared as content for your social media sites. Leverage new smartphones, tiny video cameras and other devices to create, capture and post content when you are away from your desk. Post to Twitter at the seminar while the thought is fresh, rather than taking notes and typing them in later.

Learn and use the advanced features of social media. For example, make sure that your Twitter posts populate your Facebook page automatically or have them captured to an RSS feed for automatic posting on your blog.

If you are always on the lookout for opportunities to create and capture content, much of that required daily minimum can be achieved in parallel with your daily activities.

If you run a construction company, sell tires or do taxes, the concept of social media marketing still applies to you. Your peers and competitors are already enhancing their brand and building a customer base by providing best practices, tips, tricks and product and staff videos. Why shouldn’t you?

Consider the sports bar model: People like to watch sports with others who share their same rooting interest. Add beer to the mix and you have a winner (even if your team isn’t).

“Businesses need to embrace that sports bar mindset,” Burnes says. “If you put content out there that is interesting and useful to your customers and helps your customers solve problems, your customers will come to your site like bees on honey.”

Burnes’ free Hubspot Website Grader (website.grader.com) has attracted more than 1 million people by providing a useful tool and promoting it via social media.

Jeff Rohrs, of Indianapolis-based e-mail provider ExactTarget, knows that branching out into new marketing techniques isn’t easy. Before 1990, marketers had about seven different tactics (direct mail, TV, radio, etc.) at their disposal. Those media had been around for decades, so marketers became experts at them and could focus their efforts. Today, there are more than 30 tactics available, Rohrs estimates. Unfortunately, budgets and staffs have not kept up.

“Focus on the tactics that are working for you, and build from there,” he suggests. “Just because it’s the newest, buzzed-about thing doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the most relevant thing for your business moving forward.”

But it could be. “That’s why you want to experiment with it,” he clarifies. “But there are very few marketers who are deploying all 30 of those tactics right now.”

Losing time or playoff games is not easy. But if it leads to increased revenue — or a string of championships — the pain and effort is worth it.