Social Media is an investment of time.

If you start up a new business, you have to invest in it. When I started my business, I got a website, some business cards, and some equipment for my new office: a computer, a printer, etc. These were all financial investments, things that I knew I couldn’t do without, things that would make my business run, and pay off in clients in the long term.

Social Media is like that, but it won’t cost you money, it’ll cost your time, and you have to think of that time as an investment in your future business.

How much time should you invest?

At the beginning, the investment will be deeper. It takes time to get your systems in place, get them up and running. I call it building the machine. Once the machine is built, however, you just have to feed it every day or two, and it will hum happily along on its own.

If you have a big event coming up, a launch, a play premiere, a showing, for example, you need to plan in advance. You can’t just create a Facebook page the night before your event and expect it to go viral. You need 3-6 months to build up the kind of numbers you’ll require to get the attention you’ll need.

Something magical happens after you pass certain milestones in terms of the numbers. As long as you are delivering quality content, and providing value, and responding to the people that are trying to create conversations with you, your numbers will grow organically. And as they get bigger, they begin to grow faster. A kind of snowball effect starts after you hit certain critical mass.

If you haven’t yet started, I can’t think of a better time than now to jump on the bandwagon…