SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues.

In this week’s poll, we asked: How much time do you spend on social media each day? The results:

• Less than 1 hour: 30.31%
• 1-2 hours: 25.62%
• 2-3 hours: 13.12%
• 3-4 hours: 10%
• 4-8 hours: 9.69%
• No time: 6.25%
• More than 8 hours: 5%

Too much? Too little? It’s an answer we all want to know. What’s the proper amount of time to spend on social media each day? There is no right answer.

From a personal perspective, for me social media has simply become a part of my life. I am sure some around me observe this and wonder if it is all worth it. I don’t think of it that way.

From my personal blog, to reading news via Flipboard, to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. … these are all tools that I use to learn, communicate, connect and stay in touch with the people that matter to me and the world at large. I think it’d actually be hard for me to measure the amount of time I spend on social media each day. And to be honest, I don’t really care. The same way I never cared about how much time I spent reading the newspaper, talking on the phone or writing e-mail each day.

Just because the way we get and share information has changed doesn’t mean the time I spend doing it is wasted or not meaningful. I’d imagine the same is true for you, though from a professional perspective this thinking doesn’t necessarily translate.

Let’s face it though, while what I said above is true, social media (at work) can be distracting, very distracting (if you let it). It has an overwhelming ability to cause inefficiency in productivity — leading to missed deadlines, forgotten tasks and even worse, forgotten promises. It is certainly one of the main reasons 31% of companies still ban Facebook and Twitter at work.

However, at the same time, each day we are learning and experiencing tremendous benefits from getting engaged in social media activities and becoming a social business. So what is a person to do? Here are some tips to keep your time spent on social media in check.

• Be disciplined. Create planned times in your daily routine to conduct your social media activities and stick to it.
• Develop targets for each activity. Track progress and your time spent, and measure your performance. Having achievable targets is vital to managing personal productivity because it lets you know when to stop one task and move to another.
• Do one activity at a time. Personally, one of the things I have noticed that causes me to become inefficient is mixing the activities. I’ll be in the middle of writing an article, and the next thing I realize, I am commenting on a post I read for research. That’s not disciplined — that’s wandering. Be careful not to get lost in an endless amount of clicks and links … and look back after 30 minutes has gone by and you have nothing accomplished.

Do you have other advice for staying productive and not allowing social media to become a drain on your time?

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1. Social marketers get a guide from Facebook
2. 7 signs that a social media “expert” doesn’t know what they’re talking about
3. Why Pinterest is a big deal for marketers
4. Facebook overhauls the “Like” button
5. The year’s 10 worst social media meltdowns
6. StumbleUpon overtakes Facebook as top social-traffic source
7. 9 commandments that no social media marketer can afford to break
8. Bank of America falls prey to Google+ “brandjacking”
9. The Facebook gaffes you can’t afford to make
10. Twitter redesign gives brands a page of their own

Of course, we also run original posts here on SmartBlog on Social Media — and the top 10 most popular original articles of the year say a little something about the state of social media as well.

The top 10 original posts here on SmartBlog on Social Media:

1. The 6 best free Facebook apps for businesses
2. How to use LinkedIn to jump-start your job search
3. How to be funny online — without getting fired
4. 9 tips for building a Facebook fan base from scratch
5. 6 tools to measure your personal branding efforts
6. 10 tips for social media introverts
7. Are you ready for the second wave of social media?
8. The power of touch: How we misunderstand social media engagement
9. 7 questions every social media strategy must be able to answer
10. Live from Social Media Week: The Suxorz picks the worst social media moves of 2010

What do these lists tell us? Let’s see…

• Lists are as popular as ever. It’s almost a cliche to mock list articles (or “listicles”) as being cheap cop-outs on the part of the author — or at very least, a sign of over-reliance on a formula that by it’s very nature makes deeper analysis difficult, if not impossible. But the numbers don’t lie. People like easily digestible, well organized content. I wonder if that means that this article (a list of lists) will shoot straight to the top of the charts?
• Facebook is essential. But alternatives are more than welcome. The No. 1 story on both lists is about getting more out of Facebook. That makes sense, given that Mark Zuckerberg’s baby takes up 1 in every 7 minutes spent online. But when we talk about someone challenging Facebook in some area (Pinterest, StumbleUpon) it gets everyone’s attention.
• Google+ is a snooze. There’s only one mention of Google+ on that list — and it’s not exactly positive. For the most part, social networking’s new kid got precious little love from SBoSM readers this year. The network has a lot to prove before business audiences start taking it seriously.
• Failure is a winner. Schadenfreude is alive and well within the SBoSM community. You guys love reading about other people’s missteps. Of course, it’s not just about  laughing at other people’s pain. It’s about learning from their mistakes.
• Rules matter. Social media is supposed to be old news by now — right? Facebook is about to turn 8. Twitter is already half a decade old. We should have a handle on this by now. But we don’t. Because the truth is that social campaigns are messy, organic things. We continue to search for the tools, the strategies, the insights that will allow us to tame the beast — even if a pat series of guidelines has eluded us so far.

What were the social media stories and ideas that mattered to you in 2011? How did social media change for you during the year?

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SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues.

Last week in a post on Google+, Larry Page opened for business Google’s latest leap into social networking, Google+ Pages. In the announcement blog post, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra wrote that you can “build relationships with all the things you care about — from local businesses to global brands.” Gundotra continued, “The initial launch of Google+ Pages brings us a little bit closer [to our vision], but we’ve still got lots of improvements planned.”

So, in our poll this week, we asked: Will your business be joining Google’s social network? The results:

• Yes: 58%
• No: 42%

These are exciting times if you are Google. But what if you are the person responsible for your brand’s social media strategy and management? Irrespective of whether you are joining the network, your initial reaction might be, “Just great, yet another social media outpost that I need to monitor and manage for my business.” Honestly, how many of you are feeling that way?

While I agree that social media fatigue (and overload) is a real problem for companies, the unfortunate truth of the social Web is that you won’t succeed with that attitude. The winners on the social Web will view the introduction of Google+ Pages as an opportunity; only the losers will see it as a burden.

You have a social media strategy with specific goals. Another network shouldn’t change anything relative to that. It might affect how you allocate your resources, but it’s simply another outpost for you to execute (or not) your existing strategy. Though in the case of Google+ Pages, with the added value to search results via the +1 button, it might be too important to ignore.

For the 42% of you who won’t be joining it, I’d strongly suggest reconsidering that decision. Remember @BPGLOBALPR on Twitter during the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill? It looks like the brand jacking has already begun on Google+. Don’t let that happen to you. At the very least, protect your brand’s reputation; claim your Google+ Page.

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• Google+ throws open the doors for brands
• Facebook opens up Twitter sharing to individual accounts
• Why Google+ will lose its battle with Facebook
• 7 ways to wow a tech-savvy crowd
• The fatal flaw in Facebook’s social graph

Image credit: narvikk, via iStockphoto

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Google announced in a blog post Monday that Google+ is now allowing organizations to create pages, after months of Google+ accounts being restricted to individual users.

Since its beta launch in June, the social media world has been fixated on Google+. Stories have covered everything from adoption rates to whether it can dethrone Facebook and attract the masses.

Members of the general public and social media pundits may disagree on the usefulness of Google+, but best-selling authors Guy Kawasaki and Chris Brogan say it is here to stay. Their advice Thursday at BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Los Angeles: Get on board now.

Four key take-aways from their talk:

1. It’s where passionate people hang out. Facebook is for your friends and family, the people you already know. But Google+ is where people go to connect with others who are passionate about their interests that they don’t know yet. Whether it’s ice hockey, cars or photography, the early adopters on Google+ are discovering each other and making connections that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.
2. Better sharing than Facebook. Without Edgerank arbitrarily deciding who gets to see your posts, you can be sure all your connections are getting what you share. And according to Kawasaki, the level of engagement is much higher. Plus, with Circles, you can share content only with specific groups and help prevent sharing fatigue.
3. It’s great for SEO. Kawasaki pointed out that Google doesn’t index all of Facebook, and they no longer index Twitter, but public content on Google+ is already pulling up in the ranks. That’s crucial for anyone trying to market their brand. A search for authors is showing how many Circles they’re in, which is great for credibility.
4. They were right about Twitter. Brogan wrapped up by sharing their track record with Twitter; essentially laying down the “I told you so” card. In 2006, he was on it, and people thought it was stupid. Guy got on in 2007. A couple of years later adoption rates continued to increase, and today it’s a huge force. And now in 2011, he and Kawasaki are saying Google+ is “gonna’ be big.”

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• Bitly unveils social media prediction system
• 3 rules for adding a little humor to your blog posts
• Marketing tips from Facebook’s Page Insights manager
• Google+ chief says pseudonyms, brand pages are coming this year
• 10 luxury brands succeeding with social media

Image credit: narvikk, via iStockphoto

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• 7 lessons from RIM’s Twitter meltdown
• Essential Facebook apps that won’t cost you a dime
• How to give your social campaign a performance review
• Google+ needs a major shakeup, says Google engineer
• How SAP keeps 8,000 bloggers on message

Image credit: narvikk, via iStockphoto

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• Facebook admits to tracking users after they’re logged out
• Google+ is almost ready to open its doors to marketers, exec says
• Join now or get left behind, LinkedIn tells marketers
• 4 social media startups to simplify your online life
• Why Facebook’s Ticker is a big deal for brands

Image credit: narvikk, via iStockphoto

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• What it takes to find a job on LinkedIn
• Facebook plans ad giveaway that targets small businesses
• Google+ opens to the public, adds features
• Facebook prepares to launch enhanced sharing features, interface changes
• More buttons may be coming to Facebook, source says

Image credit: narvikk, via iStockphoto

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So what about Google+? The newest entry to the social network major leagues is taking a page from Twitter’s handbook, letting third-party application developers do all of the heavy lifting. But instead of letting these new feature coalesce into full-blown clients that render the first-party experience obsolete, these improvements are being channeled into extensions for Google’s Chrome browser.

The result (ideally) is a robust, evolving feature set that’s easy to customize, doesn’t overwhelm the user and doesn’t make the core experience completely irrelevant.

The downside to this approach is that Google hasn’t done a great job of letting users know they can improve their experience with plug-ins — and it hasn’t made it easy to identify the most useful tools on the market. In the SmartBrief tradition of helping you figure out what really matters, here are what I consider to be the seven best Chrome Extensions on the market.

• Surplus: This plug-in is ideal for those times when you want to add a link or a comment to your Google+ stream, without running the risk of getting sucked in by all the cool stuff your friends are sharing. It adds a little button to the top of your browser, click it and you’ve got the full Google posting experience, with none of the distraction.
• Google+ Refined for Google Plus: There are a number of tools that promise to let you reconfigure your Google+ experience in some way. In my experience, most of them don’t work well. Google+ Refined isn’t the most ambitious style tool out there, but it’s functional and gives you the option to streamline the site and make a few minor visual tweaks that improve the look and feel of Google+.
• G+ Twitter for Google Plus: Gives you the ability to post your Google+ updates to Twitter, treating the competing social network as just another circle. I’m not necessarily in favor of linking all your social media accounts — I think each network has its own strengths and weaknesses and needs its own dedicated content. That said, if you want to tweet from Google+, this is the way to do it.
• RSS Share for Google Plus™ and Google Reader: The name really says it all. Use this to seamlessly share what you’re reading.
• G+Me for Google Plus: This lets you collapse all updates, making your Circles much, much easier to skim.
• Replies and More for Google+: This plug-in combines the share-to-other-networks functionality of the better known Extended Share for Google Plus with the neat feature to reply directly to the author of a comment.
• Helper for Google Plus: There are a bunch of plug-ins that promise to let you mark a post and save it for easy reference later. Unfortunately, they don’t work as advertised. But you know what does work? Delicious — that URL saving and sharing tool that was saved from oblivion by the founders of YouTube. And with “Helper” you can bookmark a Google+ post and mark it for further action, ensuring that you never let another important post fall by the wayside. As a bonus, this plug-in also features a translation tool and a bunch of other features.

A few quick caveats:

1. The downside of using browser plug-ins is that they can make a browser sluggish or prone to crashing if they conflict with one another. You may need to experiment a little to find the plug-in combination the works best for you.
2. Google is constantly updating Google+ and plug-in makers are constantly updating their products to compensate. What works today may not work tomorrow.
3. New plug-ins are being added all the time. By the time you read this, one of my recommendations may have been outclassed by a competitor. Once you have a feel for what you really need out of Google+, try adding and subtracting plug-ins to develop your own ideal user experience.

What features would you like to see added to Google+? What Extensions are you using?

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