Social Media at Work- Time Waster or Marketing Opportunity?
Posted by Beth Hrusch on Tue, May 04, 2010
Not long ago, Salary.com did a survey of American workers in which they asked how many hours per work day were spent on personal, i.e. non-work activities. In other words, how many work hours are people wasting. Around 73% of respondents indicated that they spend part of their work day on personal stuff (the other 27%, of course, would never dream of doing that-- good for them!). This is a 10% increase from the year before.
The vast majority of people estimated that they waste 1-2 hours of company time each day. And what are they doing? Here's the breakdown:
48% of time- on the Internet
33% of time- socializing with co-workers
30% of time- conducting personal business
19% of time- personal phone calls
15% of time- long lunches or breaks
It got me to thinking-- how much time are people spending on social media during the work day? Has anyone done a survey on that topic yet? Well, even without one, it's reasonable to assume that, with about 300 cajillion people on Facebook now, some of them are, even as we speak, messing around with social media on the company dime.
The question is, is it necessarily a bad thing? We talk about social media as a marketing tool, and how it can help you grow your business through consumer engagement. What if your employees were encouraged to use Facebook and Twitter at work, to, you know, market the company? After all, some companies are now hiring people specifically to handle their social media accounts-at work.
Businesses spend millions each year to block employees from wasting time on all of the above listed nemeses of productivity. Should they be finding ways to take the time people are spending on social media anyway and have them use that time productively? For example, why not have a few employees spend 10-15 minutes a few times a day to chat with your customers on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn?
Let's say your office manager has a personal Facebook account. She could update her page with a note about how she just tried out the new company product the other day and, boy, did it work! Got the stain right out! She could then highly recommend said product, maybe post a picture of it, and go from there.
Imagine if social media became part of the work day, and was treated just like any other marketing activity. Once you start thinking of it as a marketing opportunity instead of a time waster, you may find that you can get more out of it. And your employees, too, for that matter.