Social Media Time Management
Do you look at your goals for the week and realize you have not accomplished as much as you hoped? Every week I have a set of goals, and while I might not be as compulsive as some people, I need to accomplish a set of goals each week for my business. With so many different social media to take part in it can be difficult to manage the time you spend using social media and before you know it you have spent three hours reading, commenting and taking part and not accomplishing your goals for the day.
To help manage the time you spend on social media here are some tips I use to try and make sure I get to the other things that need attention during the day.
- Limit Your Time - Set a limit on the amount of time you are going to spend on social media. By setting a time limit you will be more focused on what you are doing. There is a good post on the Instigator Blog about how to build your social media profile in 10 minutes. I aim for 30 minutes.
- Pick and Choose - Don’t try and do everything at once. Pick your favourite social media and focus your attention there. This will help you to build up better profiles and reputations instead of spreading yourself thin across a lot of social media sites.
- Use RSS - Find a good RSS reader and use it. It will save you a great deal of time by collecting your RSS feeds in one place for you to read. A good reader will also allow you to mark posts that you might want to come back to and comment on or keep for reference.
- Walk Away - Don’t forget you have family, offline friends, and other things that need your attention. Walk away from your computer and just leave it off, the online world can live without you for a while. Often when I return to the computer I will have new ideas to share with people.
Those are my top social media time management tips. By following those simple tips I have been able to stay focused on the things that need to get accomplished for my clients while still feeding the part of me that needs to take part in the social aspect of the web. How do you manage your social media time?
Thanks to Help Me… Social Media is Trying to Take my Life!! who inspired this post.
Comments
Shana Albert
These are really great tips for managing your time in regards to Social Media Activity. I know too well the time management dilemma when it comes to Social Media. I still haven't come close to mastering it, but I'm working on it. :-) I'm glad my post inspired you. Enjoy your Holidays!! Shana
Aaron Stroud
I'm a stay at home dad, so my free time comes in short bursts---sometimes as long as five minutes! I tend to do my reading, commenting, and social bookmarking throughout the day. When the evening arrives, I finally have uninterrupted time that I need for writing. So I shutdown my newsreader, email, and instant messenger to minimize my interruptions.
LGR
I understand that perfectly. Today was one of those kinds of days for me. I am finally in my office looking at what I need to get done in the next couple hours. I can do some social media throughout the day, depending how the kids are but when I get to my office in the evening I put the head phones on (more to block out noise) and get to work.
LGR
Thanks Shana. I enjoy your blog. I have it in my feed reader. Social media tends to take up a lot of time. I suppose that is the nature of being social. It is enjoyable, but I know I have to limit the amount of time I spend on it.