Enjoying Social Media ROI?

LONDON, January 28, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

As businesses increasingly include social media in their marketing mix, the more social media impacts in some way on our lives - whether you are an entrepreneur using social networks like Facebook or an employee using LinkedIn.

     (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131125/654555 )

Although still a relatively new means of marketing for all of us, it's inevitable that social media will encroach even more on our respective routines. Perhaps in the next five years we'll be looking back wondering what the fuss was all about and take this amazing communication channel for granted - like the telephone for example.  

But at what cost?  

Many studies are showing around two-thirds of businesses are achieving no return on investment (ROI) using social media. Additionally, nearly half of small medium businesses are spending more than six working hours a week on social media marketing.

Enjoy social media whilst achieving ROI. If you're thinking that's surely a given, that's of course fine. I mean, you wouldn't do something you didn't genuinely enjoy, right? However consider these thoughts:

• You have frequently posted and even shared your contacts' content with little or no engagement or reciprocation. How do you feel about that?

• You are overwhelmed by social media and you feel that it's taking up too much of your time, with little or no results. Is that being efficient and productive?

• You're considering starting to market on yet another social network, (or starting on social media for the first time). What will you do to ensure it doesn't take over your life and that you continue to enjoy engaging whilst managing to take care of your other responsibilities?

Despite the excitement, (and in some cases - hype), consider that there are also countless of dormant profiles on various social networks too. Do you think those who started their accounts were enjoying social media and achieving results when they decided to give up? How do those dormant accounts look to you and others?

Social media can, of course, be exciting and a highly effective means to market your products and services whilst adopting it as a means to support your crucial off-line activity. It can also be very disruptive.

Nevertheless, the key is to enjoy social media without feeling overwhelmed and ensuring it doesn't take up too much of your precious time which can otherwise be costly.

What helps is adopting a proven and time efficient methodology ensuring you're achieving return on investment to justify why you are using social media in the first place.

ACCELerate™ is a proven methodology that's British which is also making in-roads in America.

Click here: http://www.SocialMediaMethodology.com

John Coupland, author of 'ACCELerate™ Your Social Media', is a multi-award winning e-Business & Networking Professional. John has over 25 years of award-winning experience in retail and account management, with over 18 years in e-business. He left the corporate world in 2009 and founded and runs a number of influential social networking groups, consisting of thousands of business owners, alongside his business, @networkerplus Social Media. He helps businesses with their social media strategies, speaks at events and also runs on-line campaigns for small medium businesses and leading brands.