A Question of TIme

I was at a communication studies conference this weekend, and a conference is a great place to get inspired academically and professionally.

There were many topics covered at this conference (The Communication studies Graduate Caucus at Carleton University) among the ones I found most interesting were:

• Neglected discourses of sexism, racism and homophobia perpetuated by the players of online games (this was the keynote)
• A closer look at viral marketing
• The digitization of libraries
• Different ways to consider the body with respect to mobile technologies and the internet
• And finally, the idea of time as a valuable resource.

It is this last point that I would like to explore. To use social media properly, whether personally or professionally takes time. This is either time taken away from other activities we could be doing, or in the case of business, sometimes this results in a monetary cost as time needs to be met with increased levels of staffing. This effects our businesses in two ways.

First of all, we have to remember that everyone's time resources are finite, so if they are to choose to engage with our social media campaign, then they will not be doing something else. Therefore, we need to give people a convincing reason to spend their time with us.

Secondly, we have to choose how much of our own resources we can or want to devote to our social media campaign. How much resource expenditure is worth what kind of return? If we spend too little, we might not be able to earn the engagement of our audience. However, if we spend too much, the return on our investment may not be satisfactory.

People have unlimited amounts of love. In other words. they can love multiple products or companies equally without diminishing their feelings for each. People do not have unlimited amounts of time or money however, and in order for our social media campaigns to be successful, we need to take seriously the idea of time as a resource for ourselves and for our clients/customers.