Preface: If you were to execute the strategies discussed in this post, you could significantly reduce the amount of time spent on each social networking site. But remember that the social media space is built on engagement and interaction. If you aren’t engaging with your community at least once in a while, your community may not be very receptive to your pitch if/when a new sales opportunity is staring you in the face.

Not Enough Hours in a Day

If you’ve been dabbling with social media for a while, you understand the time-consuming nature of the space. For many companies, their commitment to social media has forced them to either add dedicated staff or outsource the effort. But we, as small businesses, don’t typically have the resources to do either of those,  so we’re relegated to spending the time ourselves, or we just don’t.

The main thing we all need to realize is that your friends/followers/connections are constantly throwing out sales opportunities. In fact, I’d argue that most status updates or tweets are sales opportunities for someone or some company. Here’s a Twitter screen shot I just pulled straight from my stream to help explain my point (in red)…

Bottom line, sales opportunities are there for those who are listening. But listening takes time and most of us can’t afford to sit there and wait for something relevant to appear. But we’re in luck… There are ways in which we can leverage the built-in technology of these social sites to do the listening for us and deliver those opportunities to our front door. Read the rest of this entry »