How To Succeed in Social Media Marketing Without Wasting Time And Money

To succeed in Social Media Marketing you need to guard your time with intent. It’s very easy to slip down the rabbit hole on social media if you are not purposeful with your time.

I call them the “The Big Three-Time and Money Shapers” for any online business using social media.

Your Purpose,
Your Strategy,
Your Comfort Zone,

Each are part of a solution, which provides a way to keep you, your online business, and your social media activities productive.

If you tip the balance on any of these three, you run the risk of becoming unproductive – wasting time.

Wasted Time = Wasted Money

Wasting time, in a sense is wasting money – just like putting a flame to your hard earned one hundred dollar bills.

When it comes to TIME and MONEY, Benjamin Franklin said it perfectly:

Remember that Time is Money. He that can earn Ten Shillings a Day by his Labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle one half of that Day, tho’ he spends but Sixpence during his Diversion or Idleness, ought not to reckon That the only Expense; he has really spent or rather thrown away Five Shillings besides.

In other words, squandering time is just like throwing away money.

“Time is Money” may be a well worn cliché, but it definitely resonates strongly with me, especially when it comes to an online business and social media. I suspect, if you read on, the “Time is Money” expression will resonate well with you too.

Take a minute, and answer honestly…

When it comes to your online business, are you being as productive as you can? Seriously, are you using your time wisely?
Are your social media activities plagued with shiny object syndrome? Are you being sucked into a social media black hole?
Do you have anything of substance to show for the many hours you spend writing content?
Is you time being consumed by helping existing clients, with not enough time to find new clients?

I believe you get the point! Short of time, but are you wasting time – wasting money?

An excellent short video (“What Stephen R Covey taught me about Time Management“), with a proven method to help you manage your online and social media time more effectively.

My Story – Save Time. Fire A Client.

Lesson #1: Learn to classify your tasks correctly.

You need to be able to understand, not only the important tasks, but the unimportant one’s too. Classify both correctly. That will give you the best chance of managing your time effectively.

My story began when I fired one of my clients. In hindsight, firing the client was the best thing that I’ve done in a long time – sanity restored, no more wasted time, and the hundred dollar bill burnings have stopped.

During the course of the relationship with this client, I sensed something was not right. I couldn’t put my finger on it. However, if I answered just 2 simple questions before I hired the client, I would have not hired the client.

Does this client meet my business objective and further my purpose?
Does this client fit into my ideal client persona?

Take a few moments to understand your purpose and your ideal client?

A meaningful purpose, with clarity about your client issues and solutions will produce and environment that allows you to easily classify (important and unimportant) tasks. Correct classification will allow you to be more effective managing your time in your online business and social media.

Back to my story…

Lesson #2: Make sure you select your clients and work that support your purpose and business objective.

Instead of helping this particular client with my “Personal Branding and Strategy” services, my time was being consumed as a “Technical Virtual Assistant”. I was involved in tedious tasks such as, creating, proofing, and posting WordPress documents. The email instructions that accompanied my clients instructions were ambiguous, and required multiple back-and-forth clarification.

Failure to recognize early on in the game, that this client was not my ideal client and did nothing to further business objective, had cost me tons of wasted time and money.

The Realization: These non signature tasks came at the expense of wasting time, neglecting other clients, ignoring product development, generally being non productive towards my purpose, and a high level of stress.

The Action: Terminated client relationship

The Results: Freed up time to focus on other clients, forming joint ventures, and continue developing products.

Lesson #3: Don’t be scared to terminate client relationships if they prove to be non productive.

Your Purpose. Your Strategy. Your Comfort Zone.

“The secret of success is constancy to purpose.” Benjamin Disraeli [Click To Tweet This ]

As you can probably imagine, this event caused me to do a deep dive into “wasted time activity” areas for online business and social media. What follows are these areas, grouped into logical categories, and my suggestions on how to avoid wasting time.

I came up with, what seemed to be a mile long, of items that are probably consuming your time unnecessarily. Some of these items:

Being sucked into the social media black hole
Preparing content out of your comfort zone
Taking on clients that are not aligned to your purpose
Unscheduled promoting, sharing and posting on social media
Implementing the ‘next best idea’
Mimicking an influencer

The common theme amongst the items echoed words like “Out of your Comfort Zone”, “Waiting too long”, “Unnecessary things”.

Deciding to take an even deeper dive, I was able to group about 80% of the wasted time activities into three distinct groups:

Group 1: Servicing clients that you should not be servicing
Group 2: Spending time on activities that do not matter
Group 3: Doing activities only in your comfort zone

My primary objective was to understand how to eliminate wasted time. After assessing the list of items in each group, it wasn’t difficult to spot how to eliminate the wasted time:

Group 1: Align your services with your purpose
Group 2: Make sure you have a strategy or plan that can support your purpose
Group 3:Challenge yourself to step out of your comfort zone

Define Your Purpose

When I look back over the last 25+ years, my successes stories have had a direct correlation with a strong purpose. Having a purpose gives you direction and focus, and it’s the purpose that dictates who you service (help), and how you service them.

If you get side tracked from your purpose and intentions, the symptom may show up as servicing clients that you SHOULD NOT be servicing. Said a little harsher, but probably more accurately, “…. servicing clients that you have NO RIGHT to service”.

It’s a natural thing to take on business that ‘loosely’ fits your skills, but its the inconstancy of your actions against your purpose that may cause an injustice for both you and your ideal clients. The bottom line – purpose driven work uses your time effectively. Purposeless driven work is wasted time – money up in flames.

Take it for what its worth, but I find the connection and correlation of success to purpose extremely compelling.

Have A Strategy

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” Michael Porter [Click To Tweet This ]

The biggest culprit of the time suck syndrome is a deficient strategy.

Even if you have a purpose, but don’t know how to get there (aka no strategy), you’ll probably look like a hamster on a treadmill.

Just a humorous side thought: Does a hamster have a strategy for what they are trying to accomplish? What are they trying to accomplish?

If you embark on a purposeful journey, for example, how to help your clients have better lives, then you should have at least a plan a) how to find them and b) how to help them.

What’s your social media plan?
What’s your list building plan?
Are those plans measurable?

Without a plan – a strategy – there is a strong likelihood that you’ll be wasting time, and burning money.

Challenge Yourself

Most of us tend to spend time on activities that are in our comfort zone. I call this “The mediocrity killer”.

If you continue to do the same thing, day in and day out, same comfort level, your results will be the same.

It’s this comfort zone lethargy, which will keep you stuck, and in essence wasting your (and others) time.

I know it may seem counter intuitive to do task out of your comfort zone, but in the long run, it’s those challenging tasks that will move you forward and save you time. As long as the challenge relates to your purpose, and fits within your strategy, then you’re good to go.

By periodically stepping outside of your comfort zone, you will learn stuff you never thought was possible, and become even more productive. Your ideal clients will love you for what you do, you will love yourself for what you can do, and you will be using your time effectively.

Wrap Up

“There are 86,400 seconds in a day. It’s up to you to decide what to do with them.” Jim Valvano [Click To Tweet This ]

By now, you should understand the power of:

Making sure you have a purpose,
Building an online and social media strategy that can achieve your purpose,
Stepping outside your comfort zone every once in awhile.

It’s easy to lose sight of your online objectives. With the awareness of what you are trying to achieve in your online business and social media, how you’re trying those objectives, and constantly validating your efforts, you will become aware of the areas that are consuming your time unnecessary.

Now it’s your turn. Let us know how we can help you.