Ahhh, the shiny and captivating allure of social media. Behold! It’s easy to do, free to get in, and well, the pros make it look pretty easy to manage, so you can balance it all too, right? At first, it’s a few minutes here and there, and then…you can barely complete a sentence without checking your newsfeed or tweeting something surely the entire follower nation wants to read.

Where did that balance go? Is this reallllly part of your business activities or are you under the influence?

Boundaries…Set Them, Honor Them

After any class I teach, presentation I make or workshop I run, I see a glint in some people’s eyes; they think they can figure out the magic formula to make social media easy, as easy as email. Get on, get off, get back to work. Sure, it actually, IS this easy. So what happens? 

It’s not the only thing you have to do, right? It’s just one piece of all that you do in a day. But there you are, messaging and giggling away.

I have a reminder, fellow entrepreneur: You have a business to run. You have customers to tend, maybe even employees to manage. You have proposals to prepare, follow up calls to make, and thank you cards to write. You have A/R, A/P, and RFP’s. You have deadlines, contracts, and obligations. You have professional requirements, marketing objectives and workflow refinement, that all need your attention. You have vendors to deal with, networking and business organization meetings to attend, and oh yes, you have a business to run. Are these things being neglected because of your fascination (or (gasp!) is it an addiction??!) to social media?

Like all marketing, social media should be a small portion of your own work each day, yet I see numerous people talking about social media like they’re “in the business” of talking about social media. Why?

My best guess is you’re probably fired up about it, and that’s great, buuuut. Are you letting the shine of social media interrupt your real work, you know, that thing that pays the bills and keeps you off the streets? Might you be wasting too much time on various channels trying to figure things out, or trying to become somewhat of a “pro” in your given field? OR are you simply distracting yourself from actually running your business, allowing social media to appear like “work”, when reality it’s just a procrastination vehicle?

So, I’m asking you to think about this, start weaning yourself a bit, and set some boundaries. It’s great that you’re there, but there is work to be done. Don’t let social media be the thing that actually holds you back from the reality that is your business. It’s a tool and unless it IS your profession, I suggest you get to work and schedule your time there more purposefully. Concentrate your efforts on being good at what you do and helping your business grow, and then reward your hard work with some tweet/pin/update/chat time.

Afterall, the truth is just because social media and its tools are mostly free, doesn’t mean the time it takes to run it is also free.