Do you use social media as a business tool, or because you’re lonely?
This may sound like a mean question, but it’s a legitimate one.
To find the answer, you first need to do an audit of the time you spend on social media sites during business hours.
Figure out how much time you spend on these sites. Then think about what kind of return you are getting from the time spent. I’m not suggesting that you need to make an immediate income from your interactions each day. You might be investing in relationships that will pay you back in six months or a year from now.
But look closely at how you spend your time on social media. Is it part of your marketing plan? Or does it just feel good to be in touch with people during the course of the day?
The second thing to consider is the timing of your social media engagement.
Do you log in once a day? Or are you checking Facebook and Twitter on an hourly basis, or more?
If you check in on your social media accounts several times a day, I would ask that same question again: Are you doing this to build your business? Or are you doing this because you feel isolated and lonely?
If you suspect that at least in part you are engaged in social media because you feel isolated and lonely, you don’t have to beat up on yourself. As freelancers we are isolated. It can get lonely. We don’t have a water cooler. We can’t hang out with colleagues for lunch each day. Often we miss and crave the casual human interactions we had as employees.
But do the audit, and be honest with yourself.
When you spend time on social media sites for reasons that are not directly related to your work that day, you are allowing yourself to be distracted. And social media sites have the potential to distract you dozens of times each day.
Think about that. If your kids or friends interrupted your work a dozen times a day, you’d get pretty upset with them. You would say something like, “Hey, I am trying to work here. I can’t get my work done if you keep interrupting me this way. Each time you interrupt me, it takes me about ten minutes to get back into what I was working on.”
Do you do the same to yourself by checking your Facebook and Twitter accounts a dozen times each day?
Do you break your own concentration for ten minutes, a dozen times a day?
That’s two hours of work time you just lost. Ten hours a week.
Social media can be a great marketing tool for freelancers. But be honest with yourself when it comes to using these sites.
How much of your interaction is about business, and how much is simply feeding your need for human interaction?
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