You look at the clock. Shocked, you realize that you have just spent over an hour poking around on social media sites. You were swept away by the latest news on Twitter and your friend’s new pictures onFacebook. Where’d the time go?
Social media has the power to suck time out of your day, but it does not have to! Social media demands only as much time as you set a precedent for. Here is what I mean: If you start a blog and post on it every day for the first few weeks, people will expect that you will continue to blog daily. As soon as you fall short of that goal, people will most likely stop following you because they assume that you have lost interest. If you set the precedent that you will blog 2 or 3 times a week, that is all people will expect and it is still enough to satisfy them.
Here are a few strategies for minimizing time on social media sites:
Set a timer: Though this idea may seem rudimentary, it works. If you want to spend only 30 minutes on the computer, then set the timer for 30 minutes. When it rings, just get up and walk away. At first it may be hard to stop immediately when the buzzer rings, but eventually you will become disciplined.
Use 3rd Party Apps: There are great applications around that allow you to manage multiple social media sites in one single place. Some of these include Tweetdeck and HootSuite Pro.. By using these applications you only need to login once and you can see everything that’s going on in one place. It really eliminates the possibility of getting sidetracked by useless information. You can also schedule tweets and posts in advance eliminating the need to get on several times a day to write a tweet.
Make a budget: Time is money. If you are spending your time on social media, you are, in a sense, spending money. Any person who is wise with their finances would tell you the importance of creating a budget. Do the same with social media and create a social media budget. Decide how much time you have (or want) to spend on any given social network then divide your time according to what you want to accomplish when you are on that network. For instance, say that you want to spend 10% of your time browsing for new connections on LinkedIn, 60% of your time reaching out to connections and writing to them and 30% of your time writing recommendations for people you have worked with. By budgeting your time on any network, you are have set goals for what you want to accomplish and you have allotted yourself the time in which you can do it.
Determine your ROI: What do you want to get out of social media? Do you want the latest news? Do you want to be a thought leader and share your ideas? Do you want to see your friend’s photos from the weekend? We each have different goals while surfing the web. Figure out what you want your social media ROI to be. Meaning, determine how you want to benefit from being online and figure out how much of your time you are willing to invest to receive those benefits from being engaged online.
You do not have to waste your time on the Internet. Your time is valuable. Your social media accounts only demand as much time as you set a precedent for, so choose wisely how you are going to spend your time with social media and maximize your effectiveness online.