A recent survey conducted by an Australian company revealed that social media and online social networking is becoming detrimental to the education of high school students.  The students involved in the survey reported that when they intend to spend only a few minutes on a social networking site, they end up being on the site for an hour or two.  This takes out a lot of time from their homework schedules.  Majority of them admitted that they spend more time blogging or chatting with friends than doing school work.

Many of my teenage relatives who are my friends on Facebook regularly post and are very active on the site.  The attraction of these social networking platforms is that you can express your feelings and write or share almost anything without your lecturer checking out your spelling or grammar.  The downside is nobody will have the heart to correct you of your mistakes.  There seems to be a general culture of tolerance and people just want to take away the good and fun side of the social site. 

Office workers also get into the social networking sites even during office hours to break the monotony of their daily routines. These sites also help you to get in touch with your long lost friends all over the world.  Connecting regularly with your relatives and friends makes you feel close to them and can add some fun and excitement to your otherwise dull moments. 

 So, is social media a help or a distraction to our daily lives? 

 Well, here are some reasons why social media is a great help:

• it provides us an avenue to get some loving words of comfort from our family and friends
• it keeps us posted on the whereabouts of our friends
• it allows us to share our interests and beliefs with the special people in our lives
• it allows us to share photos of our magic moments

When is it a distraction?

• when it takes us away from our urgent and important tasks, such as doing homework or doing our real work 
• when we lose some of our sleeping time just so we can post our latest photos
• when you have other chores to do and these get neglected due to a change in priority, i.e. checking facebook before doing your tasks

The important thing to remember, in order to avoid the social media and online networking sites to distract us from our important tasks and activities, is to be disciplined with our time.  As we all know, time is gold and once you lose it, you can never get it back.  The good news is, you have control as to how you want these sites to work for you: either a help or a distraction.

All he best!

Ros

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Recent studies claim that the worldwide use of social media (such as facebook and twitter) has doubled.  On average, users tend to spend more than 2 hours a day.  Most people spend time in social media mainly for entertainment.

Tweeting, blogging and posting content on social media sites can take time.  However, there are no fast rules about how much time you should spend on these activities.  Many people say at least 2 hours a day while others seem to agree that the more time you spend on social media, the better the results will be for your business or clients.

If people are spending this much time, they might as well use this media to increase their income.

Here are some Social Media strategies that people, especially women may want to employ to improve their business:

1.  Be consistent.

Develop a regular time daily and dedicate that time to do social media.  You may also use tools to facilitate this strategy.

     2.   Start Conversations.

The power of social media lies in the ability to create conversations. This builds relationships among friends and customers.

   3.   Diarize your social media Schedule.

It is important to know when most of your subscribers are online.  This will be helpful in acquiring feedback fast.

     4.   You need to provide content in order to make your presence felt. 

You also need to listen to your subscribers, including reading their posts and replying to them on time.

      5.   Converse with them.  This is the surest way to build relationships with them.  After all, this is what socializing or social media is all about.

Men are usually at the forefront of technology while women are usually at the forefront of social media.  As such, more and more women are arriving in droves at the social media sites.  While men usually spend almost the same amount of time in front of the computer, they are more likely to do other things like play games such as World of Warcraft, Grand Theft Auto, poker and even betting.

So, women and social media?  Well, the obvious trend is that through the nature of women, these two are a good mix.

The future of social media is going to be all about women. So if you’re going to create the next hot Web 2.0 site and you want it to go viral, target women.

All the best!

Ros

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