The time investment required for success in social media can be pretty intense. There are thousands of good possible places you can concentrate on to promote your cause but it is impossible to utilize them all. Which is why having a vision for what you want to accomplish and a plan to get there.

Chris Winfield of SearchEngineLand recently published a set of things you can do this year to achieve social media success. It’s called, “10 Simple Steps To Social Media Success In 2008″ and I have his list re-iterated here for your convenience. However you may want to visit the article and read them in more detail to get a more applicable use for these activities. The one that caught my attention was the idea of bookmarking posts you like but in another language. In other words, doing the translation essentially on behalf of the original poster to ultimately benefit you at the SEO level.

Here is his list along with a snippet and estimated time you can expect performing each action…

1. Connect w/ Others (1 hour per week) - Add 2 contacts per week to your profile on sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
2. Master a Discussion Forum (2 hours per week) - Become a regular masterful voice on a popular forum that interests you.
3. Trim Your Feed Reader (5 hours per month) - Narrow the selection of blogs you read to just a few and comment on them each.
4. Meet a Digger a Day (15 minutes per day) - Contact someone on Digg that interests you and form a bond.
5. Publish Company Video - Create a video to represent your company and build links to it. (Excellent Idea).
6. Think Globally (10 minutes per submission) - Translate articles you Digg into another language
7. Focus on Results - Not all social sites produce fruit. You want to closely monitor how each impacts your traffic and stop using the ones that do not produce.
8. Answer Questions (15 minutes per day) - Answer 5 questions a day in your niche on Yahoo! Answers.
9. Join the Conversation (20 minutes per day) - Find out where and what others are saying about you and join in on the conversation.
10. Year in Reviews (15 minutes per review) - Create reviews on the sites where your company is presented.

Excluding the reviews idea and the company video, this equates to approximately 10 hours per week of recommended activity you can expect to perform in order to achieve success in social media. That is no small chunk of time.

Notice there is no mention of producing content. The time required for researching topics, formulating a thesis or an opinion and then writing on a subject is demanding too. Even when you have people writing for you you still want to research topics and review what is being written.

This form of online brand marketing is no joke. You can’t take it lightly. You can’t expect results simply by creating a profile and posting some photos to it once in a while. You have to divulge yourself into it and engage virtually with those you encounter. Social Media success is no small feat.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 11:47 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.