When social media becomes too time consuming

Social media is fun. Social media is a great way to connect with other like minded people. Social media is a great way to interact with potential clients and customers for your business. But what are you supposed to do when social media becomes too time consuming and wraps up the vast majority of your time and you’ve been sucked into the black hole and cannot seem to get out long enough to keep your business floating?

I recently in the past month have hit this very question head on. For the past few months my income stream from blog designs has been level, give or take a few hundred dollars. However, in October, the revenue I brought in has dropped 25% Not only has it dropped 25%, but I wasn’t planning for this like I should have and have been hit with a few financial obstacles I need to now hurdle over.

Social Media is a great TOOL for business – not the business itself

For those who don’t know yet, I am currently trying to slide from a full time design career which has been very good to me over the past year and a half and moving more towards a full time writing career, specifically a social media geared article writing job. So currently, social media is something I am tending to focus more on in order to leverage it correctly, but while I do this I need to also remember that a blog design company is not solely built off social media. Go figure, after a solid month of social media networking and a lackluster month of design income I figure it out.

Balance. Balance. Balance. Social media is a great way to connect with potential clients and interact with people who can become part of your tribe and help broadcast your business to even more people. But social media is not the entire business, as I have rudely found out in this past month. Finding balance is the key to a happy relationship in your home, at your job or with yourself. Finding that balance can be a bit harder then it sounds though.

Creating a set of goals to challenge yourself

I am now siting down as I write this post and crafting some goals for this month. With the upcoming holidays, I truly cannot afford another month like October. I announced on twitter recently that I am aiming for double my income of October in the month of November. While this might seem like a giant leap, it’s only the stretches we make with ourselves that really test our drive and show what we’re made of. Of course I could easily say “I want to make my normal revenue again” but where would the challenge be in that?

Limiting your social media time

I know some people who spend 3-4 hours tweeting each day, while others only tweet for an hour or so while they’re stumbling and looking for other interesting links to read. Myself, I’ve been stumbling and tweeting for a good 5-6 hours a day, constantly checking @ replies on twitter and stumbling until my fingers get sore (ok, not literally, but you get the picture).

I am now setting a limit of the time I spend on social media for the rest of November. I am limiting it to 1 hour per day during the early morning so I can get it done and get that energy flowing which I can then transfer to my design work. After all, I still need to make double my income from October this month and we’re already 1 week in!

Anyone else have this issue or am I stranded all alone here?

I know someone out there has to be in the same boat as me right now. Or maybe you’ve gone through it already and can offer up some solid advice for me and the rest of the readers here? Or just maybe, you’re reading this article right now and feeling like you’re going down this same path and want to cut the head off the beast before it gets too big.

Whatever your current situation, I want to hear from you. I need help! Drop me a comment and let me know what your thoughts are on the entire situation. I’d love to hear from you.