The Social Media Examiner regularly publishes some good stuff on social media tips and strategies. (That's SME's cute little icon to the right.) Managing editor Cindy King recently posted some helpful "ways to overcome the social media time sink."

I'll give you a few here (there are seven), along with my usual 2 cents, but it's worth clicking on the link to read them all.

1. Set One Specific Social Media Objective

Before you see any return on your time investment in social media, you need know what your business can get out of it.

This can be easier said than done, and it's probably the main reason most organizations have no idea how to measure social media success. After all, if you don't know your objectives, how can you develop and implement a strategy, to say nothing about assessing its effectiveness? Many organizations get panicked into social media because "everyone else is doing it." That's not an objective, that's a reaction. Instead, figure out first what your organization's social media objectives are. Once you've done that, King writes, you can proceed to:

2) Find the Right Social Media Strategy for Your Business

[Y]our social media strategy needs to be tailored to the particular message you want to convey to your audience.

Again, this is about your objectives and strategy, not, "Our competitors are on Facebook and Twitter, so obviously we need to be too!" I touched on this in a post yesterday about newspapers using social networking tools ("There's no magic formula for social media. You've got to find what works for your publication.")

3. Make Your Presence Social

Once you have defined your social media strategy, the process does not end there. It will only work if your presence is truly social and, as Rebecca Leaman says, you need to also "focus on being good online neighbors."

Relentless marketers, are you taking notes?

King has the rest of her tips here.