How much time to commit to social networking

Received the following message from friend today:
Hi Michael,
“You know the thing that I am most confused about is how you find the time to engage in the development and maintenance of the pages? Do you do this as part of your work time or do you do it as part of your free time? Please let me know so that I can share the information with my Board of Directors and gain their support.”

Response:
While social network is free, the time it takes to keep content fresh is definitely not. I spend 10 hours each week maintaining Facebook relationships as part of my job; I might add that I have a very supportive executive director and board who have agreed with my strategies, so far.

In the year I have been communicating on Facebook I would say that that a small group of [directed] volunteers could get the same effect or better; but the key would be in matching volunteers to the task, establishing communication guidelines, and regularly monitoring activity.

I am working on this matter now to handle our growing FB presence. The following idea is fluid and evolving; but my objectives are to build volunteer buy-in in order to take on more FB communication, and my targets are volunteers from throughout the US, and my time horizon is four to six weeks.

The effort started as a work around to help me post information on more than 70 FB medical group walls. You see FB tracks if you type or cut and paste, and how fast you can do either. Move too fast and you will receive a warning to cease spamming or risk termination of your profile. The first time I received the warning I was terrified, which wore offer after the third warning. But I sent a mass messaged to the Cause and Group using friendly language and got two responses. Then I went to the Cause Hall of Fame to identify the most supportive people and asked them individually to help. Now there are two-dozen people across the US cutting pasting messages I send to them, to group walls that I have assigned to them; and no more termination warnings from FB.

In a few weeks I plan to ask these people to join a private message board or list serve to talk about what they are doing with each other, and to see what ideas emerge. I am hoping those outcomes will grow into localized chapter groups or similar, communicating with each other to benefit themselves and MHAUS.