Week-by-Week Management of Web 2.0

Roderick Low is a social media coach and trainer at Expeditus Media. He helps small and medium businesses make sense of the social web and equip them with the skills, tools and strategies necessary to reach out and connect to their target audience.

Most people have made a mistake thinking that social media is just like an advertising initiative: put it out there for 3 months and hope that it sticks.

But that’s just not the case.

Creating a blog or a social media account might only take you a maximum of 10 minutes, but once that’s done, you are in for some high commitment. When you start a web 2.0 initiative, you should think about what and who are required over its lifespan, not just the pre-release.

This is the follow up to my previous post about time management on social media. In this post, I want to give you a run down of the real time cost and how you can make full use of social media without over-stretching your already limited resources.

1. Be a Participant

If you are just starting out in the world of social media, I have good news for you. You don’t need to have a lot of time or technical expertise to engage in the social web. In fact, all you need is a computer, Internet access and an interest to seek understanding and feedback.

If you have 1 to 5 hours a week, you can…

Take a trip to the blogosphere. Go to Technorati or Google Blog Search and search for your brand to track the buzz surrounding it. You might want to post a comment in some of those blogs, correct any wrong information that exists and most importantly, connect with the bloggers themselves.

Build presence on sites like Flickr and YouTube. Again, add a comment if you feel there is a need to. This is also a good place to get an education about how people are using your images.

Visit community forums if your objective is to connect and talk to people. There are many different types of community forums around, each having their own agenda and influence.

Manage a corporate Twitter account. Running Twitter feeds isn’t the most time consuming part. Getting the right audience to follow you is the tough one. I suggest you start off by searching for the right people and institutions to follow.