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Time and time again people ask me if social media is worth doing. Is it a time drain?

An interview with Marc Krisjanous.

Some time ago, I was asked during a Linkedin discussion if Twitter really worked because the chap was skeptical and thought it could be a waste of time. I pointed him the direction of an article on this site called Getting Started with Twitter. He read it, added a link to it from his own site and got to work.

That was some months back now, and so I decided to catch up with him and see how he is doing, because he seems to have taken a real interest in Twitter and Linkedin. Very active, so is it worth it for him?

This is his response to my questions.

How much time per week do you spend on twitter?

I spend about 2 hours per day on Twitter building a presence and driving traffic to our business web sites. A selected group of my staff spend an additional 1-2 hours per day on Twitter.

What about Linkedin?

About 30 minutes per day. I will however increase this as I have found LinkedIn to be extremely good at networking – however Twitter is very powerful as well for this purpose.

Have you had any direct business from Twitter?

Yes for MobilizeMail.com and PropertyTalk.com has benefited - resulting in signed contracts. The benefit of using social media is that most people when they contact you have already been “sold” on your value and now want to join. Twitter has also driven most of the traffic to our new site (3 months old) BusinessBlogs.co.nz and from that I have two companies interested in sponsoring BB as well as requests to contribute on BB – fee based.

The same for Linkedin?

Yes though the effort is more involved as pointing people to a blog post is god in Twitter (140 char restriction) but with LinkedIn you need to participate more.

Any really interesting stories to share?

I have been some amazing kiwis on twitter including Jayson Kingsbeer and RWW and some very well connected people with huge networks. I have no hesitation in saying that my staff and my effort on twitter have greatly rewarded our businesses.

Which industries do you think would REALLY benefit from social media?

For networking every business can benefit from SM but you need a strategy in order to fully gain the benefit from your effort. A business also needs to workout were their prospects are hanging out and focus on working that SM channel. Remember not to SPAM and always participate. BusinessBlogs.co.nz has had a good amount of interest from business owners who don’t have the time for SM but still want to have a presence.

I guess social media is working for Marc then.