“If I have two hours in a day (or a week) to spend on social media, how should my spend my time?”

This is not an uncommon question that many association executives and business leaders ask. While attending the event, “Social Media: An Evening with Chris Brogan” I got the answer.

Chris Brogan, a long-standing social media guru who works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications broke down how one should spend their time in social media in to three buckets. I’ve paraphrased Chris’ response as well as added a few of my own insights.

Listening (30 minutes)

If there is one thing social media brings to us, it’s the ability to listen better than ever. No longer do we have to survey to hear what our customers and members are saying. Regardless of what tool or platform you are on, you need to listen. For example, if you’re trying to understand “Hybrid Events“, use Twitter search to see who’s talking and get links to examples and information. Listening also includes. Measuring web site traffic or the bit.ly links in your tweets are good ways to know what your audience finds valuable.

• Search tools: Twitter Search, Google Blog Search, LinkedIn Q/A
• Other tools (some fee based): Radian6, trackur, trendrr, scoutlabs, hubspot, google analytics, spiral16
• A popular place for event professionals: #eventprofs on Twitter

Connecting (60 minutes)

People buy from people. And, people like to help people. It’s in our nature as humans. A good way to build relationships is to make a genuine connection. Here are a few ways to do this:

• Make comments on blogs
• Participate in a community or on a listserv
• Use the @ mention and re-tweet in Twitter
• Give recommendations in LinkedIn

And when you do share your voice, it’s about them, not yourself. Connecting isn’t where you comment on a blog and talk about your product or include your monstrous signature file. Connecting is responding in a sincere fashion.

Publishing (30 minutes)

Writing blog articles, creating and sharing videos YouTube. Posting photos on Flickr are just some examples of publishing. You need to think of yourself as a production studio or media company that adds something of value and meaning to your audience. Again, don’t talk about yourself! Talk about what’s important to your members or customers. Give them something interesting and helpful to read or watch. Promote the things that your product or services affect. If your a member organization, don’t write about why you should join and get into details what the benefits are, rather upload photos from your latest event or share an interview from your keynote speaker in your event blog.