We are often told by clients that they simply don’t have time or the know-how to engage in social networking, even when an effective social network campaign might be just the ticket to achieving many of their business goals. Furthermore, as they don’t see the clear value in engaging a community via social media tools, they have little motivation to learn more about it.

While the issue of value is significant, it’s not for this article. In this piece, we’re going to dispel the myth that effective participation in social networking is a black hole of time and too complicated to engage in. It’s not. In fact, you can execute a successful social networking campaign in the same time that it takes to read the daily industry news or eat lunch.

So, without further ado, we have compiled a few simple tips to help you start building a valuable and effective social networking community.*

1. Start small

There are dozens, even hundreds, of social networking tools to choose from. So which one is right for you? The answer to this question usually involves a larger conversation about what you’re trying to communicate, to whom and how. But on the whole, it’s a safe bet to look at four of the major social networking players: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube , and Flickr. If you don’t have video and photos to share then you can eliminate YouTube and Flickr right away and start your efforts by focusing on Facebook and Twitter. You can always add others as the need arises.

2. Choose your spokesperson wisely

It’s easy to assume that an intern or junior staffer is best suited to manage your social networking accounts. The thinking is often that because they’re typically younger they’re already actively engaged in these channels and they have the time to spend updating them. And the truth is they may be the most appropriate choices, but we would argue that a more experienced representative of your company’s brand and reputation is typically better suited to fill that role.

Now, it doesn’t have to be the CEO of your company – and probably shouldn’t be – but keep in mind that social networking is real-time messaging about your organization. Would you put a junior staffer in front of The New York Times to talk about your company? Probably not. So why would you assign that person to speak about it every day to hundreds or thousands of people – people ready and willing to share your messages to hundreds and thousands of others, including perhaps The New York Times? Finding the right person to manage your social networks is a hugely important consideration and not a role that you can afford to cast off as intern work.

3. Keep it personal

For most organizations, it’s important that they engage on social networks as human beings, not as nameless, faceless corporate entities. Social networking is ultimately about building and maintaining relationships between individuals and communities of individuals. Therefore, inject a little personality into your social network updates. Post updates for your company as a real person, using the “description” or “about” fields as a place to introduce yourself, your name, your photo, and so on.

4. Keep it to just 1 hour per day

Social networking does not have to dominate your week. Commit to spending 1 hour a day engaged with your networking channels. This doesn’t have to be 1 full, committed hour. You can break it up throughout the day.

5. Monitor, publish and communicate

A successful rule for using your one hour per day is to divide it into three primary activities:

1. Monitoring (staying current on known issues, discovering who your influencers are, and staying current with issues you might not be aware of that affect your organization)
2. Publishing (providing news updates about your company or issues that are of interest to your company, promoting events, discussing projects underway at your organization, posting coupons or sale information, encouraging specific actions from your community)
3. Connecting (finding like-minded people, associations and organizations working on similar issues and using the tools provided on the social networking sites to communicate with them).

Use the system below to determine how much time to devote to each task.

For those just starting out

• 40% Monitoring
• 40% Publishing
• 20% Connecting

For those slightly more established

• 20% Monitoring
• 40% Publishing
• 40% Connecting

For more help setting up a social media program for your organization, contact us.

* Note: these tactics are not one-size-fits-all, but for many organizations these activities will move them much closer to social networking success.

Feature image courtesy of guydonges – Flickr Creative Commons