Time Crisis

Time Spiral - Photo courtesy of gadl

I hear it all the time when it comes to social media: “How much time is this going to take?” “How much time should I spend on this?” “I don’t have the time for this.” People look at the dizzying array of social media tools and instantly think that their time will be monopolized and wasted doing something they can’t guarantee will have a real impact on their business.

Before I even address this, I want to say that social media, like any type of social interaction, requires effort, both in terms of listening and in terms of engaging. If it’s treated as a chore, then that’s exactly what it will become, and no amount of time savings will convince anyone otherwise.

The truth is that we all waste certain amounts of time in our day. Would you say you waste 30 minutes of your day? 60? 90? There’s time you can spend on social media, and here’s the dirty little secret: the time you spend is cumulative. A chunk of time becomes far less daunting when it’s broken up into bite-sized pieces. In order to manage your time and avoid being sucked into the vortex, try some of these simple steps:

• If you’re in a creative mood, write a few blog posts in one sitting, and then schedule them out. (Don’t tell anyone, but I didn’t write the post you’re reading this morning!)
• Use a desktop application for managing Twitter and leave it running in the background, so that you can monitor conversations as you go about your day. (many of these applications also help organize the conversation stream in a much more efficient manner)
• Create a task list for yourself of the things you want to accomplish each day and at minimum, do the list.
• Look for mobile applications/solutions. You don’t need a Palm Pre, iPhone or Blackberry to be able to use social media on-the-go (although it does help)

If you’re using social media, how do you budget YOUR time? I’d love to know.

Tags: Business, Social Media, Time management