Do You Waste People’s Time?

In economics, the value of time is the opportunity cost of the time that a person or business spends on creating or pursuing value. In essence, this makes it the amount that a person would be willing to pay in order to save time, or the amount they would accept as compensation for lost time.

The value of time varies considerably from person to person and depends upon the purpose of time spent, but can generally be divided into two sets of valuations: working time and non-working time. This division is appropriate because the value of working time (i.e. time spent working) is calculated differently from the value of non-working time (i.e. time spent in our personal lives).

The Cost of “Spending” Time

Time is a value that is represented by what you get from “spending your time”. Social media takes time and for many it becomes a big waste of time.  When people waste time they loose productivity. Time and productivity are intrinsically tied together.  You can’t gain productivity if your wasting time. On the other hand if your using time effectively you gain productivity and more time.

The difference between wasting and gaining time is knowledge. How many businesses lose interest in social media as a productivity tool because they don’t “know” how to use it effectively?  Understanding how to use technology effectively is the knowledge required to gain time and thus productivity.  Understanding how to apply knowledge gained to solving old problems and/or creating new innovation is the route to maximum productivity.  Productivity attracts people and any product or service that enhances productivity attracts revenue.

The “Cost” of Wasting Time

Any product or service that steals peoples time is not an attraction and is sure to reduce the audience of buyers. Any message, product or service that doesn’t enhance peoples productivty produces waste. The market of conversations is attracted to people and things that save time thus producing value.  People and brands that put up barriers to time and productivity  lose the currency of their conversations. When you lose the currency of  conversations you lose your audience. When you lose your audience you lose your market.  The data and examples that reinforce this statement are endless.  See “Do Brands Steal Your Time”.

It doesn’t matter what your selling rather what matters is whether your conversations save me time and increase my productivity. Pushing out non productive messages, spam, scam and all related tactics steals people time.  Not enabling me to access your information efficiently steals my productivity.  Social media can waste time or increase time. It all depends on “knowing how” to us it effectively and efficiently.  If someone taught you how to get more time both personally and professionally what would be the value of that productivity?

There are a lot of people who can teach you about social media but the value lies in how to use it effectively and efficiently. The difference between the two is time and productivity. How much is your time worth?  Time is a conversational currency that can produce or reduce your value. Get it?

What say you?

Tagged as: business blogging, business change, business disruption, business exchange, business relations, business solutions, business transformation, conversational marketing, innovation economy, jay deragon, social capital, social commerce, social media roi