I don’t need to tell you how effective social media engagement is essential to your business growth goal. effective here is a keyword. Social websites are not called Social for no reason: they are friendly in nature. To be successful in SMM, you need to focus on building relationships and avoiding the sales pitch or at least making it subtle.

Needless to say, the process can be time-consuming, especially with the avalanche of social media options out there. So how can you take advantage of SMM without spending too much time on it? Here are some tips to help you.

Tip 1: Opt for a profitable delegation that produces results

I often feel like doubling or tripling the number of my Facebook fan/friend page is time consuming and boring until I was browsing a freelancing site and came across this interesting job posting: “I’m looking for someone to add friends to.” to my Facebook”. account of a certain city. I’m looking to have 3000 friends added from a certain area.”

Guess what, the employer offered $15 for this job and there were plenty of candidates lined up. The beauty of hiring freelancers to do the “donkey work” on your behalf is that it saves your valuable time for what really matters, plus there is no risk involved here as you only pay for results. In fact, I would recommend looking at job postings on some freelancing sites to get more ideas for time-saving tasks that you can delegate. A good place to check is oDesk because they have a category for SMM jobs.

Also, if writing isn’t your thing, it’s worth hiring an SEO copywriter to take care of your blog content because if your blog isn’t stand out to your niche, others will and you certainly don’t want that.

Also, hiring a professional to make some short but great video presentations about your business to be posted on YouTube and on your own site is definitely an investment in your place.

Time is money. Sometimes “buying” some of your precious time for a few dollars can be a good decision. And if you go the freelance site route, you’ll always end up with a good deal.

Tip 2: Be selective

You need to be very selective and choose the best social networking sites that are in line with your business goals. When doing so, think quality versus quantity. In other words, it’s better to have quality profiles on 3 social sites and take the time to build a powerful presence there than to simply create profiles on 1000 sites you probably wouldn’t visit again. At a minimum, you should opt for Twitter, Facebook, and your own blog. And hey, YouTube is a fantastic visibility magnet, so keep that in mind! Later on, you can also add LinkedIn to the mix.

Tip 3: Take advantage of technology

There are so many free tools available online that help you pre-schedule your social media posts, the most popular of which is ping.fm. You can dedicate 2 hours a week to pre-schedule your posts and voila!

Having said that, it’s important to realize that these automated tools only handle the “broadcast” side of social media on your behalf. It still needs to be effectively present in some carefully selected social networking sites to answer questions, interact and build relationships with your niche. Good luck!