Who’s the boss? – Social media and business users

 

[Thinking man*]

At an online meetup session sponsored by the ATA Mastermind group, the moderators noted the importance of managing use of social media in terms of proper time investment. Just as in face-to-face meetings, it is neither practical nor healthy to be interacting with people every waking hour of a day. They noted several factors for a healthy presence on social media, including focus, frequency, feeling and effectiveness. Clearly, the ratio of time investment to benefit should be appropriate.

[Upward chart]

Whatever the media, including Facebook, Tweeter, Linked and Instagram, the participant can attain enjoyment, information, work or strategic position. Clearly, people follow certain sites for the pure pleasure of the content, whether it be pictures of cats or jokes about husbands, to name a few that I have heard of. It is perfectly legitimate to start and even end the day with a smile on the face. Information sites are more practical as colleagues are often the fastest source of help in overcoming the challenges of running a business and solving technical mysteries. Many freelancers actively use social media either to advertise their goods and services or find customers, a practice that has only increased in the last year. Finally, for certain services, a constant presence on social media is a key factor in creating and maintaining a market presence. All these results are potential benefits of social media use.

[Media types]

Given the sheer number of media types and forums, it is neither possible nor desirable to be everywhere even if you are a full-time social media director. The ideal strategy is to identify a few forums where your target audience, whether customers, colleagues or both, are found and continually monitor and participate in them. Not only will the time spent managing the media stay reasonable but the long-term benefit will be substantially higher as you become known or you catch the available job minutes after it is posted. Clearly, identifying the ideal forum is partly a matter of trial and error and may need to be assessed periodically. Still, properly directed efforts are a worthwhile investment of time.

[Clock]

Unlike teenagers during the summer vacation, business people generally have too many tasks to accomplish during a day. This fact creates the need for prioritization and scheduling. Social media management is one of these tasks and should be conducted when and how often as required, depending on the goal. Information and marketing can be on once a day without any loss while lead searching is a time-dependent goal and may have to done more frequently to be effective. However, it is clear that a one-minute scan of new posts should not regularly turn into a half hour break because it means that more vital tasks are being postponed. To attain the best results, scheduling a regular time for business media monitoring ensures proper attention without overinvestment of time.

[Battery]

One of the keys to daily and long-term success is positive energy. In other words, people must strive to eliminate any avoidable factor that saps energy. In practice, any site whose content and discussions mainly contain pessimism, hostility and one-upmanship should be avoided as their damage is greater than any benefit they provide. By contrast, forums that professionally and objectively discuss dilemmas help us form an opinion as if we had personally talked with a colleague. Thus, it is vital not only to consider the content of the media but also its tone. As said, since social media is an alternative, albeit a forced one, to face-to-face discussions, always choose positive people even if they disagree with you. You should feel encouraged after a personally social media exchange.

Bull and bear]

The ultimate test of social media time is the benefit attained. The assessment depends on the desired goal. For example, one or two leads a month may justify the time spent monitoring a certain site while it may be necessary to wait a year before reaping the benefits of a long-term marketing campaign. For information sites, an effective and quick solution for a time-consuming problem may justify a regular scan of the posts as it shows that that the site can be beneficial. As for the sites that makes us laugh, the measure is obvious – it makes us smile almost every morning. By contrast, if the site content is generally not relevant for whatever reason, it would be advisable to search for a better forum in terms of the time investment.

Entrepreneurs can utilize social media to improve their business or allow it to sap their time and energy. A conscious decision of how and where to allocate work time leads to effective use of these media for the intended purpose. These choices need to be periodically reassessed as circumstances change. It is vital that the entrepreneurs make active choices and show that they are the boss.

* Pictures allow the blind to fully access the Internet. All picture via Pixabay.

Famine relief – Profiting from lean times

Most freelancers, including translators, suffer the extremes of work demand. A period of having to refuse work is suddenly followed by one of seeking work.  To one degree or another, this instability is a part of doing business.  As such, the freelancer must learn to cope with it both psychologically and actually benefit from the free time. The key to keeping in an even keel in those quiet times is to view the free hours not at a threat but instead as an opportunity.

To clarify, the cause of the quietness on the email front may be known or unknown. Worldwide, August and the three weeks from December 15^th to January 6^th are great for retailers but awful for service providers simply because most non-retail businesses close or go in sleep mode. Likewise, national and bank holidays affect transactions for one to three days.  A quick Google search can quickly identify the various and multifarious off-days of a given country.  In fact, in Israel and many countries, there is the term “after the holidays” to explain why nothing can be done during certain times of the year. A hidden factor may be an internal company matter or specific sector crisis. The long term and fundamental causes of downtime are slow but constant trends in the economy or business sector, such as a recession or conglomeration, which change the supply and demand curve. Clearly, a despairing freelancer can often but not always find a comforting explanation for the down trend.

A time to breath after a long stretch of intense work can actually feel quite refreshing.  It is the ideal moment to clean up unfinished matters.  These include ongoing accounting or financial issues, bill collecting, financial reporting, email correspondence and inventory, to name just a few. Given the importance of the Internet for most businesses, it is vital to periodically review and revise all profiles, brand identifiers and approaches.  All these tasks tend to be postponed while work is heavy but must be carried out in order to maintain a business.  In industrial management terms, these actions are considered productive even if they are not lucrative since they must be performed in order to maintain business efficiency.

Having completed these essential tasks, the freelancer can use the time to develop known potential contacts. During busy periods, the names of people and companies that could turn into clients come up. The quiet now makes it possible to carefully consider the manner of developing these contacts and actually follow up. Not only is this time productively spent but such actions are an essential part of future growth.

For sole proprietors, the background quite allows them to switch hats and become the director of marketing and research.  The problem with being a freelancer is the multiplicity of roles that need to filled and leads to the problem of “jack of all trades and master of none”. With only one hat on the head, the entrepreneur can analyze, research and discuss macro medium- and long-term trends and decide on actions to take to stay in line with them. Such a process requires time and concentration, which is only generally available when work is slow.

Of course, business people are also human.  Quiet times provide the best opportunity to spend time with family and friends without watching the clock. Short and even long trips become possible. It is a great time to lose a few grams of extra weight or see nature (or pick mushrooms as we do.).  It becomes possible to put a check on household tasks that have been put on hold for months or higher end purchases that must be considered carefully, such as buying a car. 

The message is that down time can be up time, both psychologically and operationally. It is the ideal time to accomplish all tasks that cannot be or simply are not handled when work is aplenty. As such, the freelancer can more easily maintain a good attitude and worry less. Remember that growth in children occurs when they sleep. Likewise, freelancers prepare their growth when business is slow. They can profit from the worst of times no less than from the best of times.

I am a flashlight (with apologies to Christopher Isherwood)

Computers and Internet have changed education. While schoolrooms still use books, paper pen and pencil, the tools of learning are increasingly computers, laptops, pads, cell phones and Google, not to mention Facebook and Instagram. Wikipedia has replaced Encyclopedia Britannica. I, as a teacher of English to engineering students at a college in Israel for over 25 years, have experienced this transition first hand, admittedly with mixed feelings and some resistance.

This revolution brings into question what exactly the role of a modern teacher is. Specifically, children have direct, unlimited and easy access to far better sources of information than any single teacher can produce. Students can find countless problems and solutions, including explanations, for any technical exercise in any field online, including English grammar, mathematical problems and chemical reactions. These online services are available around the clock, whenever students have the time and inclination to learn, as compared to the artificial hours of 8:00 am to 3:00 pm.  Moreover, the students can make errors, work at their own pace and express confusion without fear of ridicule from others, unless they choose otherwise. In other words, they can choose their ideal conditions.

Notwithstanding all these advantages, while today’s students may know more facts, they are far from better achievers from their antiquated parents or even grandparents. A look at achievement test scores, matriculation tests and even Facebook conversations worldwide paints a sad picture of current thinking and understanding skills. It is as if the plethora of information is at the expense of the ability to understand it. As a way of analogy, ancient Greek and Roman doctors, lacking imaging equipment and often the right to even do an autopsy, extrapolated incredible amounts of information from their limited data.

Several years ago, my department head, for some reason, asked the staff what we thought our main role was. My answer did not mention grammar, reading comprehension or vocabulary. I wrote at the time that it was to open the world to our students. What I meant and still mean is that my role as a teacher is show how information is related, the connection between past, present and future and the manner in which this world was and is being created.  I am not there mainly to provide facts or techniques but to shine a light on the whole picture, much of which students are completely ignorant and unaware, and give them tools to understand and interpret it.

As an example from my youth, in High School, we were studying the American Civil War (1860-1865), specifically its background. The teacher has us recreate the Dred Scott Supreme Court case (1857) in which it was ruled that a black man that escaped from the South was still considered property even though he lived in the North, where slavery was illegal. We spent at least two weeks researching and playing our roles.  During these two weeks, that teacher could have covered much more material, i.e., information.  However, we students gained an understanding of the social, legal and political situation in the United States before the Civil War, which could be extrapolated to after the war and even today and how to understand decisions from other cultures and eras that don’t make sense today. Thus, the teacher did not feed us facts but instead illuminated a historical and learning process.

As I am fortunate to teach a subject that is a tool, not a body of knowledge, I have the privilege of discussing, exposing and educating. Teachers can and must communicate the how and why, not only that the what. Learning should not only create pride over good grades but also a feeling of “wow” as a result of a moment of illumination as suddenly, for a moment, the world becomes clearer and more connected, even four dimensional. Teachers are, at their best, the flashlights of understanding, then and now.