The fact that I have got a picture of a bird on this post means I may be getting over my fear of birds. Or not.

Social media is a waste of time, you say?

There have been plenty of articles flying around the web this week claiming that social marketing is a waste of time. That’s not what this article is about. I’m talking about the blogger who refreshes Twitter every two seconds while hunting for story leads or the fifteen year old girl who posts pictures of herself in underwear on MySpace (how trashy).

Okay, maybe not so much that last one, but I’m talking about the average user of a social networking, media or bookmarking service. I’m also writing this from the vantage point of someone who generates content on the web on a daily basis, not a fly-by-night surfer.

It’s a pretty common statement: social media is a waste of time. It’s either written on blogs by writers who are vehemently opposed to anything that involves talking openly to others on the web, or from people who are actually on Twitter and come to the realization that seven out of eight of their work day hours are spent tweeting.

Services are inherently just services. Whether a service is a waste of time or not is about how you use it. To answer the question that opens this piece, you have to ask another question:

Do you have a reason for using social media? Or are you just filling in time?

If you don’t have a goal when you open Twitter or Plurk or any of a myriad of these sites, then you’re going to sit there wasting time, waiting for that goal to materialize in your mind. It won’t happen. It’s the same with anything else; setting your intentions is a mental trigger to act. Nature fills a void, so if you don’t have any specific intentions, you’ll naturally want to sit there pretending to be doing something until you figure out what you’re actually meant to be doing.

My best advice: if you don’t have a reason to be tweetin’ you need to log out and get away from it all. But there are useful reasons to log back in.

Recreation & Relaxation

I bet you didn’t think I was going to list this as a goal. After all, having fun is pretty much the reason these services exist. It’s good to finish a tough article, post it and head over to Twitter to chat and have fun for a while. You cannot be productive without relaxing and rewinding and most importantly, just having fun.

It’s easy to get carried away when you’re having a good time, but if you set time limits in advance you shouldn’t have a hard time sticking to it. If you do, then you’re not ready for this kind of distraction level - go work on your self-discipline!

Networking

I’ve met a bunch of people on Twitter. Some have become friends, or have found a place in my feed reader (and I’ve often found a place in theirs) and I’ve managed to get a client or two from the service.

The competition we’re running for the next week (and if you haven’t entered, you should do so now) was largely arranged via Twitter with Dustin Wax and James Chartrand, too.

The same limits that apply to water cooler-style recreation apply to networking, because the lines between the two are pretty blurred and you can end up having some wild, fun and potentially endless conversations with new people.

Promotion

I get a lot of my visitors from social media. Twitter, StumbleUpon, even a few from Plurk. Furthermore, I don’t spam; you’ve got to log in and make an effort to be part of the community. You can’t just dump a link and leave - that’ll get your followers to ditch you like nothing else.

For content generators, getting visitors to your site is never a waste of time. Fortunately, you shouldn’t need to set a time limit on your promotion - it needs to be done, it can be done really quickly, and it’ll probably be done while you’re in the middle of relaxing and networking anyway.

Just Don’t Let it Consume Your Day

If you want to catch someone, know what timezone they’re in and what time of day they tend to come online. For instance, in our Twitter conversations, I’ve noticed that James from Men with Pens is online at 8pm in my timezone pretty much every single day. Since he’s such a fun guy, I stick around.

Remember to set your limits and preferably do this when you can give it your full attention for a while. Batching is a popular productivity technique I’ve been using for a while that Darren Rowse of ProBlogger recently wrote a great post on (thanks, Darren, for revitalizing this topic). I suggest batching it in no more than ten-fifteen minute increments.

Batch it, but with several sessions in a day. My American and Canadian friends might contend that I don’t actually do this, but the truth is my hard-sloggin’ work time is when they’re asleep. That way I can spam them when they’re awake ;

Sidenote: Remember the joke about Dustin’s post on writing at Lifehack I made in my link round-up yesterday? He took it seriously - check out this masterpiece! Oh, and go enter the competition.

Did you enjoy this article? Get free updates by RSS or email so you don't miss the next one!

Consider sharing this article with your friends, or submitting it to your favorite social network.

  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Ma.gnolia
  • MisterWong
  • NewsVine
  • Pownce
  • Propeller
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • TwitThis