Being a newbie introducing our companies offerings to an new audience that doesn’t know our brand or service through a new way of marketing; to be honest I have no idea on how much time is required at this point. I am encouraged to find this group and I look forward to reading past posts and listening to the future ones. 

Being the owner of our company, I am not comfortable hiring someone to speak for us yet. I understand that social media is not too be used as a broadcast tool only but it is meant to be a conversation conduit to understanding each other. 

Our company is hyper sensitive to good customer service and I appreciate the speed with which as the owner, I can respond to the inquiry or comments being made as quickly as they are posted. The downside is the time commitment and addictiveness of it all. 

I hope to learn from being a member of this club. 

I’m looking forward to learning a lot from this forum. Being a solopreneur also, I barely have time to read what’s new on FaceBook, et. al. and rely on e-mail alerts to notify me when I need to respond to someone.

All knoweldge and tips appreciated!

All the best!JB

I run web marketing campaigns for Estate agents and we are getting good results with 3 blog posts a week as well as daily Facebook posts.The big thing to remember is consistency and that it take times BUT because of local search you can do great networking online which leads to great offline prospects and relationships.With the bulk of prospects searching online getting your keyword and SEO right leads to very targeted enquiries.Blogging for business is all about focus and control.

I’ve been around for about 4-years or so as an independent business owner abroad. I’ve recently started to shorten my networking time because I have been doing it all wrong. So now I have been in the process for the last 4-6 months learning about this cool thing network marketing:) My New Year’s resolution No.1 Maintain an average of 10-15 hours of networking and 5-10 hours of learning and updating my networking skills for 2012. Wishing you a prosperous Happy New Year 2012:)

@mandyedwards I feel the same way Mandy!  I’m taking advantage of every opportunity that I have to build my brand and get my business out there….

The obvious answer is not enough as I am not yet making the kind of income that my business plan says I should be.  I am mostly a solopreneur with help. 

Starting a few years ago, I made pretty good  progress and then decided the web site needed to be redesigned.  Through a few unfortunate events, the put me off line for nearly a year.  So I have been trying to regain my position in the market.

First issue was to define the targets for marketing – SEO, content, social media and others.  Then to define the tools to provide the things for each of these.  So I manage a SEO effort through outsourcing, an article marketing program through staff and a social media marketing program (just starting) through outsourcing.  I also do a bi-monthly news letter that I write, two blogs that I provide content for, I am developing an advertising campaign for Ad Words and Face Book and am starting a video campaign after the first of the year.  I allow about 20 hours per week for these tasks but find I run out of time when I also have to learn as I go.

The  objective for this year is to get the processes for each of these marketing areas documented so that most of it can be out sourced but will keep the newsletter and blogs for myself.

Well as a marketing consultant sometimes I find it hard to distinguish when I’m actually marketing and when I’m not, but we spend at least 20 hours a week, actively marketing the business when you lump – content, lead gen, lead conversion and customer service into marketing.

This is a great topic. Our team at Yo!Dog Marketing actually has a strategy for new businesses that we call “An Hour a Day Keeps the Competition at Bay”. We walk you through a strategy of spending an hour a day each week walking through tasks in each of the following areas:

• website/analytics
• local search
• social media
• reputation management
• SEO

Well I need to start the answer by saying that I spend 6 – 8 hr / week on offline network marketing, I own a local business so this is  my time spent on face to face and follow activities through  mainly BNI with a little Chamber of Commerce and an  occasional ‘other’ event. The pay off from these activities is huge – approximately 40% of my inbound business last year.

So where am I on web marketing? The first thing to say (and the reason I am here) is that online marketing has not yet brought anything close to 40% of inbound business. Closer to 4% if truth be told. But this is what I am planning for 2012
2  – 3 hours to write and monitor a weekly blog post
1 – 2 hours following up on blogs / SoMe of people / companies who are likely to bring me business.
1 – 2 hours a week posting / following up on my Facebook page.
2 – 3 hours learning more – which includes time here.

So that would have me at 6- 10 hours a week… I’d like it to be more like 5 – 8.

I have been spending about an hour a day on SMM but it has not been focused and I get sidetracked. My goal for this year and one of the reasons I am so excited about the clubs is to create a SMM plan that I can stick to and spend the minimum amount of time on each week. Everyone’s responses have given me some good things to think about.

This question made me think of all of the different bits of advice I heard over the years.  I remember hearing that you needed to spend 4 times as much time marketing your blog post as writing it. I don’t know if anyone does that anymore. 

And I remember reading a great blog post with specific instructions on what to do and how much time to spend for the first 3 months online, the next 6 months and the next 6 months after that. Or something like that.  It helped me to realize that your online marketing needs change depending on both how long you’ve been online and what your goals are.

I’ve let my personal blog slide this year and plan on spending a couple of hours a week next year to get back in touch with my friends there.

I like to set a time limit of 2-3 hours a day, half in the morning and half between 5 and 730 pm

  I do 4 hours a day.  2 hours in the morning, 2 hours in the evening.  I found if I do much more than that things start to run together.  More quality time than just time doing social marketing.

Visit Nancy’s Fabrics

Glad to have found this topic as I would have posted the question as well. My SM time has grown as i became more connected.  Started with maybe 30 min per day and now probably 3 hrs per day.  Now for 2012 I am hoping to get my efforts more focused so as to have more lead generation/clients as a result of my efforts as SMM.  What  I love is that I can coach thru the internet to help small businesses with issues blocking their growth.