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Just read a fascinating article on the link between time, money, and happiness.
The article cites some psychological research which looks at how time, money, and happiness are related. You can read the whole article, of course, but if you don’t have time (!) let me summarize the main points. People experience different degrees of happiness based on how they perceive time and money.
When people are thinking about time, they tended to socialize more and work less. When they had been primed with the concept of money, they tended to work more and socialize less. The implications of the study suggest that people who think about time tend to be happier and more connected than those who think only about money.
When people think about time, and how they spend their time, they tend to behave in more connected ways. Being more connected and having more connections tends to lead to a greater sense of happiness.
As people become increasingly concerned about the return on investment of social media, it may be wise to focus on both time and money. Of course, as a business, your main focus may need to be on money, at least most of the time. But if you are using social media to build your personal network and connections, you may feel happier and more contented if you focus not just on the money you make from social media, but, also, on the connections and contacts you build and grow.
This has important implications for how satisfied you feel with your social media use.
What I’ve seen in my business is that personal connections are worth cultivating because they, very often, lead to new opportunities and new business.
If you want to be happier, focus on time and how deep the connections are with your social media networks. I believe this focus on time at the beginning will bring you more money in the end.
Filed under Psychology by
One of the biggest complaints about using social media is that it leads to incremental, rather than exponential, gains.
This means that building recognition and reputation in social media takes time, and is most often a series of small actions, applied over time, rather than one grand push which suddenly makes all your business goals come true.
This is an important consideration, because it goes back to an earlier post on investing in social media and comparing the time vs money of doing so.
While not all social media gains are incremental (think about viral videos on YouTube or viral applications on Facebook), for most of us, we’ll gain followers and notice one person at a time.
The incremental approach isn’t really favored in online marketing circles. Better to have a grand product launch, flashy hype, and over-the-top promises to drive your marketing message home. This is the direct antithesis to what works in social media.
If you, or your company, is thinking of investing in social media, be prepared for incremental gains, for the most part. (Unless, of course, you have a video that goes viral or an application downloaded by millions!- but these can rarely be planned or predicted. Fans are fickle.)
A better strategy is to invest in social media regularly, and to focus deeply on a few of the hundreds of sites. Focus in on the sites which have the greatest numbers of your desired demographic. (You can get data on this from places like compete.com or quantcast.com). Laser in on the greatest concentrations of those in your target demographic and psychographic market, and then show up regularly, contribute intelligently, and continue to do so over time.
Social media is not a one-time, one-size-fits-all approach. You need to craft a thoughtful strategy, execute it diligently, and track relentlessly.
Look for incremental gains, and be ready for exponential ones. That way, you’re prepared for every outcome, because, after all, fans are fickle.
Filed under Best Practices by
