5 tips to manage your time on social media
The other day a client told me that one of her biggest challenges is figuring out how to fit social media marketing into her time schedule. Not surprisingly this is a challenge faced by most, if not all, small business owners. In many cases, the small business owner is alone and has to do everything, which means that adding social media on top of an already busy mix like adding that last piece of straw that will break the camel’s back. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Tip 1: Schedule time at the beginning and ending of your day. You know you have a lot to do each day, so instead of stressing about checking your social media throughout the day, dedicate time at the beginning and end of your day to check for responses to your status updates, questions, answers, and to make new status updates and/or answers and questions. You don’t need to be as active as many people on social media are, so long as you show up consistently in your activities.
Tip 2: Spend time mastering one social media site, before moving onto another social media site. By mastering a site, I don’t mean just the technology, but also mastering how much time you’ll spend on it, what routines you’ll do on a given site, and also what you’ll say. Once you get comfortable with a site and develop a strategy and actions to execute that strategy, then learn the next site.
Tip 3: Stick with your routine, unless there’s a justified reason to spend more time on social media sites. Social media can be very distracting. By figuring out a routine for each site you can streamline your time on a given site. The only time I change my routine is if there’s a response to an activity I’ve done that justifies me spending more time in order to build relationships with people.
Tip 4: Don’t try to be everywhere at once. Social media is ultimately about building relationships, but a lot of times I see people trying to get on more sites than they can handle. It’s certainly important to have a presence on social media sites, but think about what sites will actually put you in front of your target audience. Define your audience as well. What makes someone an ideal audience for you. Then look for those people and the problems that you can solve for them and base your presence on that as opposed to getting on social media sites because everyone else seems to be doing it.
Tip 5: Don’t go in without a plan. Many businesses are jumping into social media without a plan, which means that their activities are unfocused and undirected. This also means that they are spending more time on social media sites than they probably should be, because they don’t have clear objectives or goals for using social media. Without a clear goal or actions that can be used to measure the accomplishment of a goal, a business has no business being on social media.
What tips would you add to managing your time on social media? What shouldn’t a business be doing or what should they do?
Categories: business, Social Media, social media behavior
Tags: Social Media, social media behavior, social media strategy, Taylor Ellwood, Time management
