THE most oft-asked question I get from others who are thinking about diving into Social Networking is: “Is it all worth the investment of time?’ (or the more colloquial version: “Do you ever sleep?”)
Coupla thoughts right off the bat:
1) That person is trying to talk themselves out of it before they start.
2) Is ANYTHING worth the investment of time? (or the more colloquial version: “Does anybody really know what time it is?”)
The problem with investing time or money or love or work in America today is that you’re expected to justify every minute or dollar or emotion or job. Quantify. Input vs. output. Results. Return On Investment.
That’s why a cottage…er…uh.. metropolitan industry has emerged to provide tools for analyzing, counting, justifying, and bar-graphing the very hairs on your teeth, and whether they deserve to be there.
There’s no fighting it, but I think there needs to be some common sense in managing it.
I’m not sure about Facebook, YouTube or LinkedIn, but there are more tools to measure your investment of time and talent on Twitter than there are burkhas in Riyahd.
Everybody knows the grandaddy top poobah of online metrics is Google Analytics. The only problem I have with it is the inordinate INVESTMENT OF TIME it takes to figure it out. Am I wrong? Maybe I’m just intimidated by statistics, but I don’t think so…after all, I made an “A” in it when I was in graduate school.
Nope. It’s just that I think investing gobs of time to figure out how to analyze whether all-the-time-your-investing-in-social-media-is-worth-it… is ludicrous (or the more colloquial: “ludacris”)
I like WOOPRA. It integrates right into my websites.
I tried HaveAMint…but it, too, was ludicrously complicated. Maybe they’ve fixed it, and I should try again.
Mostly, though, I don’t pay too much attention to it all. Other VO professionals that I respect more than they know (eg. Peter O’Connell), and who are likely much better at marketing than I, use Google Analytics…and I’m envious.
Here’s my rationale. Good content builds its own following. You don’t need numbers to tell you. I doubt Seth Godin spends much time with Google Analytics.
Concentrate on the quality of the content, and the numbers will follow.
Spend as much time as you think you need to spend on Social Networking to do what you want to do, and you’ll likely know when it’s too much time. Is that naíve?
I could be totally wrong. Tell me so. Tell me what you use for analytics.
Sorry, I gotta get some sleep now.
CourVO
