You’ve probably heard the famous line “coffee is for closers” from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. While I’m not into the whole high pressure sales vibe of the film, that line does ring true in many ways. How much time do we waste while there is still work to be done? It got me thinking how that relates to the self employed Internet marketer.
For our industry, Twitter is for closers. Not just Twitter but forums, blogs, Facebook etc… How much time do you spend a day on this stuff? 1-2 hours a day maybe? That might not sound like much but when you add it up, even an hour a day over a year is 365 hours. Given a standard 40 hour work week that 9.1 weeks of work. Think of all the projects that could be accomplished in 9 straight weeks of work. Whole businesses could be made in that time.
One of my biggest goals of the new year is efficient time management. I’m cutting out as much of these time-sinks as possible. No forums, minimal RSS, and Twitter – maybe 5-10 minutes a day to keep up with the news. How much time can you afford?
This year if you see me tweeting, you’ll know I’m “closing”.
I tried to cut down wasting time on arsing about but found you really need to keep up with news and stuff. And Twitter is the most efficient, just follow smart, no bullshit people you respect in the industry and see what they’re saying. Doesn’t kill too much time.
For those of who need a strong defense against excessive Twitter, forum, social site and blog reading, the LeechBlock add-on for Firefox is a good tool.
Pretty cool way to force yourself into good habits. Reminds me of the access control lists we used to put on routers to block employees from certain sites during business hours. Back when I worked for the man.
Thanks for that. I am an absolute procrastinator.
I’m pretty disgusted by how much time I wasted in 2009 with Twitter and other “social media” fly traps. Definitely time to trim down that excess in my schedule.
I sometimes have a very hard time forcing myself into doing productive things…like going to work.
I do need to figure out how to be more productive this year, and quitting the coffee ain’t one of the plans!
You know, I couldn’t agree with this more- and I’m just as guilty, if not more than the average person, of wasting time on Twitter.
This was a good reminder. Thanks for that.
I’m not pretty sure is Twitter for closers. I mean: there is so huge amount of people that you would like to call the closers (and vice versa) that it becomes really overrated word with no real meaning.
I must admit I am guilty of wasting a lot of my time on things like facebook and twitter. Time management is key.
Regards, David Pagotto
I must agree it can be an obsession…
I have to be involved in forums and user groups and even twitter for marketing purposes but I am scheduling it better this year, ie, 1 post per forum per day (I belong to 5) unless I have some issue that I need resolved which requires more posts as a question to the group.
1 Tweet per day. Maybe days 1 to 4 are general tweets like we all do and day 5 can be a marketing exercise.
I’ve been tweeting today for fun. Quotes from Yogi Berra, that guy is FUNNNYYYY!!!!
I spend about 2-4 hours on a daily basis , at times I worry I might be spending too much time on Facebook and Twitter
I hardly spend 15-30 minutes for social networking sites in a day.
This is a great line. Its very true, I myself waste a lot of time of on the social media, I try to cut down on socializing but its hard to. Its very addicting.
Try monitoring Twitter in a different way – get a free account at http://www.socialoomph.com/ and track keywords.
You can get emails pushed to you throughout the day with any tweets using those keywords, so you don’t have to filter through a bunch of irrelevant stuff yourself by reading everything posted by people you follow.