Ideas for Managing Your Social Media Time

I remember feeling a wave of panic wash over me not too long ago when I let my mind construct all sorts of horror scenarios if I didn’t reply to all the emails in my inbox, reach my daily level of Tweets, spend time on Linked-In profile, answer all my Facebook communications, etc.

Can you grok?

I resolved I wasn’t going to be a slave to my computer screen any more, and made some decisions about how I live my online life. I was pleasantly surprised to see this post by Matt Churchill at SocialMediaToday (one of the blogs whose RSS feed I follow because it’s a great resource for what I do) that echoes many of the decisions I made for myself.

Here are Matt’s ideas for managing your time on social media:

• Find the blogs that are most relevant to you, and stick with them
• Restrict Your Twittering
• Have a clear out of RSS feeds you don’t read
• Manage Your Social Networks

Go to Matt’s article to get the full details behind these ideas.

Now, I can appreciate that, for many who aren’t yet active in Social Networks, you may think this list doesn’t apply to you. Actually, it does if you are considering involvement in social media. Here’s why:

1. If you decide to write a blog, you’ll want to make sure your blog is extremely relevant and useful to its intended audience, or it’s not going to get read, nor will people subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed.
2. As a business owner, you may not need to Tweet at all. However, at the very least you may want to consider restricting your twittering to listening to what others are tweeting about you.
3. If you decide to participate as a company in a Social Network (or even build a social network of your own), again the issue of relevance is all-important. Are you participating in the right network for your target market? Are you giving more to the community than you are taking? Are your postings and comments benefiting others in the network?
4. Plus, you’re really lucky if you’re just getting started – you can follow Matt’s rules right from the start and eliminate “The Overwhelm” before it even begins!

This is why it’s critical to establish a social media plan. You don’t want to waste your (or your community members’) time on something that is not important, useful, effective or relevant to what you are trying to accomplish.

Tagged as: time management, why social media