Time Management for Social Media Users

When the topic of social media is raised, a comment I often hear is that social media takes up too much time. People want to know how to keep social media from becoming a time suck; it definitely can become a time management nightmare if you’re not careful.

I take a few steps to ensure that I’m not spending 99% of my time uploading photos to Facebook and Twittering with all of the interesting people on Twitter.

1. Limit Yourself: Choose a certain amount of time each day you’ll spend on social media. You might choose to spend 30 minutes to an hour each morning. I know one person who Twitters from his car while his daughters are in dance class.
2. Pick Your Platform: Another comment I’ve heard from dozens of people is that they don’t know which platform to start with first. Focus is the key. I ignore Plaxo requests at present. I avoid MySpace. I use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. That’s about what I can manage right now.
3. Give Up Something Else: If you need, and want, to find 30 minutes to an hour to use social media for your business, then I suggest giving up something else. For instance, I don’t text and I only rarely IM. I used to be able to say I watched no television; then, I discovered Hugh Laurie on House. When I watched no television, I had oodles more time.

A few years ago I read Dan Kenndy’s No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, which helps you see where time is wasted so you can get more time out of your day.

Kennedy suggests turning off the phone, running errands and commuting to work at off-peak times, limiting email, and limiting meetings. Instead, return all calls at the same time, respond to email all at the same time, etc. Batch processing tasks saves you from being interrupted and an interruption can cost you 5 minutes several times a day, which can quickly add up to an hour.

After reading Kennedy’s book, I listened to an educational CD in my car and it perfectly filled a 20-minute ride. When I worked for another company, I arranged to work from home a few days a week; that saved me four hours. My to-do list keeps me on track and means I’m not having to waste time remembering what I need to accomplish each day.

Easy-to-lose items, like keys, are kept in the proper place so I know where to find them (instead of wasting 5-20 minutes searching like I did before).

One suggestion in the book is to link all of your tasks to your overall life goals. Then, you can ask yourself if you are making the best use of your time in this moment. Sure, we’ll goof off sometimes. However, we also want to make time for what’s important to us.

Tagged as: dan kennedy, no bs time management, time management tips