How Long Does Social Media Marketing Take?

Click here http://bit.ly/eY06qg for full article.Written by Katya Small

It's no secret that having an effective social media presence is key to reaching as many potential clients as possible, but most small- and mid-sized business owners don't appreciate what it takes to get a successful social media marketing campaign up and running.

As with so many other things in business, the amount of time needed to promote yourself over social media depends on the goals that you are setting for your campaign. If you only want to establish a presence on all of the major social media sites so that your existing customers and a few potential clients can easily find you, then you should be able to get up to speed in as little as a few hours.

Creating a meaningful network of contacts, clients, partners and fans that are actively engaged in promoting your brand is a whole different story.

Leveraging the power of social media does not happen overnight. The individuals who use these services the most expect companies to provide them with useful content and demonstrate that they take their social media presence seriously. In most cases, this means that you need to have at least one person on your team who is held accountable for building up a network of friends and followers, sharing content that is relevant, interacting with users, and keeping tabs on discussions that are relevant to your industry.

While this is not a full-time job, it does require a certain amount of time. If you want to have a truly meaningful social media presence, you should have at least one person working on this project for one to two hours a day. With this amount of time and energy, you should expect to see positive results within a couple of weeks and you will find that you get more out of your campaign as time progresses and your social media presence expands.

If you lack the resources to handle it in-house, then contact a reputable social media marketing company for help.

One of the most common mistakes that business owners make when they begin their first social media marketing campaign is that they spend too much time updating their statuses, replying to comments and expanding their social media presence. As anyone who has spent much time using social media knows, these services can become a tremendous time-suck if you are not careful.

If you want to get your social media marketing campaign off the ground as quickly as possible, your best option is to use some of the top-notch third-party tools that are designed for busy professionals like yourself. By investing a small amount of money in tools like HootSuite, Monitter and TweetDeck, you can automate 80 percent of your campaign while reaching your campaign's goals twice as quickly.