Get Smart: Networking vs. “Notworking”

Is social networking distracting you from your business? Before you drown in texts, Tweets, and status updates, use these tips and tools for taking back your valuable time and making the most of the hours you spend online.

Separate business from personal. Are you establishing that social network account for personal or company updates? Establish your identity from the beginning and stick with it, says Joanna Pineda, chief executive officer of Matrix Group, an interactive agency in Alexandria, Virginia. If your contacts are mostly business-related, they may not care what you ate for breakfast. But if you’re letting customers know you have specials or coupons available, they’ll be all ears (or eyes).

Make a plan. “You should have a marketing plan and fit social networking into it,” says Peggy Duncan, a personal productivity expert in Atlanta, Georgia. “But you don’t want it to lead to social notworking.”

You don’t have to belong to every social network on the Web. Pineda recommends figuring out your goals and focusing on the platforms that can help you achieve them. “It might be LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or a niche social network. Don’t try to do everything on all platforms,” she says. For example, if your company wants to better advertise weekly specials, Twitter may be the ideal platform to do that. But if you’re looking to gather information about your customers, Facebook may be a better outlet.

Learn more about picking the right networks.

Develop a company policy. If others in your company have also tapped into social networking, lay some ground rules. How often are team members expected to post updates? What tone should online messages take? “Focus on results and not activities,” Duncan says. “It might look like they’re playing on the computer, but they might be making connections with your ideal customer. If you create a marketing plan with this in mind, you should welcome this type of activity.”

Set aside time. Schedule regular time for social networking. But don’t let it consume your entire day, Pineda cautions. “I set aside time each morning and evening to catch up on reading, update my status, promote Matrix Group in a new way, or post an interesting link,” she says.

And if she gets busy? “I may not get back online to check Twitter or Facebook for 24 hours or more, and I don’t sweat it. For me, the social networks are more about marketing, brand management, getting the word out—not hard sales. When I’m working on a sale or project, that comes first.”

Another method that works well for Pineda: She treats messages on social networks like email. “I check them regularly and respond to the most urgent messages. Otherwise, everything gets prioritized.”

Use the right tools. The easiest way to stay on top of some social networks like LinkedIn is simply to log on to your account once or twice a day—and stay away the rest of the time.

Tools such as TweetDeck and FriendFeed allow you to manage Twitter and Facebook accounts in one spot. Pineda uses TweetDeck so she can filter tweets by clients, family, friends, thought leaders and companies she follows.

Duncan recommends automating as much as possible. With TweetDeck, you can post the same message to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Set up your blog so Tweets appear automatically on the site and new posts show up right away on your Facebook page. That way you don’t spend all of your time jumping from one platform to the next to keep everything updated.

Be selective. You aren’t required to read everything every person you know posts online. Skim Tweets rather than reading word for word. Stay up to date with your favorite bloggers in FeedReader or Google Reader, both of which allow you to quickly scan blog posts in one place. And to keep abreast of what’s being said about you, your company and your industry without an exhaustive search, set up Google alerts for your name and industry phrases—that way, the updates you want are delivered directly to your email inbox.

Unplug. Social networks are the ideal procrastination tool—it’s easy to get sucked into them. But if you fall into the trap of whiling away time checking social networks when you should be working on deadline, it’s time to cut yourself off. Disable Internet access on your computer until you get your work done (if you work on a Mac, a program called Freedom allows you to dictate how long you want to disconnect). And shut off your Blackberry so you can’t check or send status updates by phone. Remember: The goal is to use social networks to your company’s advantage, not to let them control you.

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