Last week, I read a guest post on a popular PR blog that counseled people to spend 10 minutes a year on their LinkedIn profile and to schedule one or two tweets a day "to maintain a presence on Twitter."

Can you do social media in a few minutes a year? Sure you <em>can</em>.  But, the question is not whether you can, it is whether you <em>should</em>. And if you think you can achieve good outcomes by doing it the easy way, you are in for a big surprise.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500"]<a title="hard work 2  by idlphoto, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/idlphoto/4172394956/"><img src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2800/4172394956_653cbf4ef5.jpg" alt="hard work 2 " width="500" height="333" /></a> Photo by idlphoto from Flickr[/caption]
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Marketing in general, and social media marketing in particular, are not easy tasks. In fact, to achieve results, you have to spend<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> lots of time and effort</span> (and sometimes money too). Anybody who tells you you can do it a couple of minutes a day is lying to you (or maybe just misleading you).  <strong>Just having or maintaining a presence is simply not enough.</strong>

Your goal may be to just have a presence. But why would that be your goal? If you are marketing (yourself, a product, a cause, an idea), you probably have goal that involves movement (more followers, more buyers, more supporters). Just being is not going to move your goal very far forward.

Take Twitter. If you schedule your tweets and then do nothing else, what exactly are you achieving? Not engagement, that's for sure. Twitter is a responsive platform. People comment and respond in real time. If you don't participate in real time, and respond quickly, I am not sure you should be on Twitter at all. Beside the fact that one or two tweets a day will likely get missed, especially if there is something else going on (and breaking news breaks on Twitter).

Take LinkedIn. If you refresh your profile one time per year, and then don't do anything else, you aren't going to appear on the timeline. People will forget about you.

Perhaps what the guess blogger I referenced above was trying to say is that you have to have a<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> minimum presence</span> if you are going to participate in social media channels. However, you can't and shouldn't be satisfied with the minimum. You need to MAXIMIZE your presence if you are trying to achieve goals. And perhaps you don't need to be on every social media channel. Perhaps you choose one or two where you can make an effort.

Social media marketing may be easy to understand, but it is not easy to achieve. It takes a lot of time, and a lot of effort. That's a fact.

What are your thoughts? Do you think social media marketing can be accomplished easily? Do you think a minimum works? I would love your thoughts in the comments.