Managing Your Time On Social Media

image:socialmediadelivered.com
culled from: ceoonline.com

We've all experienced it, the social media time warp, where we log onto our Facebook or other social media platforms and don't resurface until hours later. However, just because social media can be time consuming, it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. You just need to learn some time saving tricks to make the most of your time on social media and use it more effectively.
Here are some top tips to help you manage your time:
1.    Use scheduling tools

Scheduling tools such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite allow you to schedule your posts in advance. For example Tweetdeck allows you to create your tweets and chose different times to automatically post them during the day. This means you could spend half an hour on Monday morning setting up all your posts for the rest of the week.

Facebook also allows you to schedule posts straight from your profile page. Even though you've scheduled your posts you should still log into your social media platforms to respond to comments.
2.    Have a strategy

If you use social media without a purpose or a strategy you will waste a lot of time. This usually occurs when you spend hours looking through your social media accounts being unsure what to post or comment on. You need a social media strategy to help you define your goals and objectives for using social media and to make the most of your time spent on each platform.

Your strategy will help you define what to post, when to post it, who will be in charge of posting, how to reply to comments and how to measure your engagement.
3.    Use RSS feeds

Do you spend hours looking for content to post? Then you should set up an RSS feed to help you find great content quicker. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is often described as a newsfeed you can subscribe to. An RSS reader shows you a list of all the recent updates from the websites you have nominated to appear.

For example Google Reader lets you add all your favourite websites to a list and then shows you of all the new content posted on these sites. This will help you save time searching for content and make posting easier.
4.    Choose a platform

You may find social media difficult to handle if you are juggling every social media platform available. The best idea is to focus on one social media platform and become a confident user before moving on to another.

Choose a social media platform your target audience uses and start engaging with them.  Once you have a community of loyal followers they may be more willing to connect with you on other platforms as well.
5.    Cross linking

Don't waste time posting three different articles on three different social media sites, when you can use the same article for all your platforms. For example the content you post on LinkedIn can also be tweeted, Facebooked or Pinned.

Tools such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite allow you to share your content automatically across all your social media platforms. However you need to make sure your post will be suitable for all your social media platforms. For example a tweet with lots of hashtags is not suitable for Facebook where hashtags aren't really used. 
Don't fall into another social media black hole, start using these tips today and you will notice a big difference in the time you spend on social media.