As social media marketing becomes a bigger part of getting noticed by customers over the Internet, a lot of companies wonder how much time and energy they should devote to sites like Facebook and Twitter.

As a rule of thumb, you should invest in anything – whether it’s time or money – in a way that’s proportional to the return that you’re getting. In other words, the more success you’re seeing, the more of your time social media marketing deserves.

For smaller businesses that are just starting out, though, that answer might not be so helpful. In that case, a good guideline is probably 1 to 2 hours per week. That’s enough to log in to your profiles and make updates each day, but not so much time that you’ll be putting off other important tasks.

The reality is that social media marketing usually takes a while to start showing real results. The last thing you want to do is put off more immediate projects to update your profiles – especially considering how easy it is to move from “marketing” to “wasting time” on social sites.

By putting in 1 to 2 hours per week, you’ll make progress with social media marketing, but at a pace that’s easy to maintain for the weeks or months to come until you see results.

Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing and advertising campaigns.