Do you feel stressed or discouraged at the thought of having to add social media to your business advertising mix?  If you do, then chances are you are one of the secret minority who have vowed never to join Twitter, and you’re sick of hearing about Facebook (that thing your teenager haunts).

Relax.  Social media doesn’t have to mean huge learning curves and wasted hours, all in the name of networking. Once you realize that business networking isn’t wasting time at all, it might make a whole lot more sense. Mind you, you might have to work a little at that shift in mindset… but you can do a few things to cut down on your social media climbing without losing valuable opportunities for free advertising.

Start Small…

You can’t get much faster than Twitter for social media networking. Compare the three hours you spent writing that article; then the frustratingly glitchy load time, uploading it to your marketing directory… and waiting 4 or 5 days for it to be approved… Now write out a sentence like this (in less than 140 characters):

“10 ways to French-braid your hair”.

Add to it a shortened link to your blog post.

Voila. You’re done.

The best way to shorten that link?  There’s 2 schools of thought…

Some say it’s better if you used an optimized post title leading directly to your blog, like so: http://www.just-an-example.com/brainstorming.html.  Keyword-wise… yes, it is.

But most people shorten their posts with bit.ly, because it allows you to add a button to your browser bar, and check your click-throughs instantly. (And remember, social networking is driven by sharing, interest and need; not by carefully-optimized keywords.)

In fact, in the time it took to write this post, you could have easily published several tweets to Twitter – each of them like little mini-advertisements. (Just don’t make the marketing too blatant – remember: You’re supposed to be hanging out, sharing and swapping.)

Of course, it’s best if you don’t stop there:  But if you’re truly busy, Twitter is a good place to start. You can post 3 highly-relevant tweets a day, in less time than it takes to water your houseplants. And you can even send your tweet while waiting at the doctor.

Twitter is truly the place for people who hate social networking.

And it’s like having your own personal mini-advertising campaign!