Social Media is a time sucker!

Good Morning, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

Have you noticed that when you log onto any social networking site this happens…

• You go on thinking I will just check x and before you know it 15 minutes has gone and you still haven’t checked that thing you went on for
• You think, while I’m here I will just …. then before you know it 30 minutes has gone
• You have Facebook logged in permanently on your iPhone and every time you get an alert on a notification you stop what you are doing and check it!
• You think I’ll just leave Tweetdeck/or whatever open incase I get a message and then end up glancing at it every other minute
• You start with the best of intentions of spending a really productive 30 minutes on LinkedIn then find out that x has left their job and so you call and have a chat to find out why and the 30 minutes has gone
• You spend a HUGE amount of time on x network but don’t seem to get any results
• Your eyes go square from looking at the monitor for too long…

There are I am sure a lot more things that happen to us when we are using social media, so the question is how do I stay on track and not wander off ? (PS have just been on LinkedIn then reading an article then liking an article then back here in the last 10 minutes, was just checking to see if I had a reply from an email!)

Given my PS on the last question, I am not sure if I am best placed to answer this one, but I think the best cause of action is do as I say and not as I do!  No, but honestly here are my tips to stop the time suck!

1. Set goals for each social medium you are using, so if it’s Facebook know what you are doing on your page daily, so you don’t get there and stare aimlessly at the screen and click on anything that looks pretty
2. Be strict with yourself, you can play all you want when your work is done, or save playing for lunch or when you are waiting for a bus
3. Have a editorial calendar, so that you know what is happening and when, so you sit down WITHOUT Facebook/Twitter/LI etc open and decide what you will do, so that the distraction doesn’t happen.  I now have an editorial calendar for this blog, for each Facebook page, for my YouTube Channel and the webinars I run (which are free so check them out!)
4. Try to set up your social networks so that one feeds info onto another if that’s relevant, to stop the temptation of saying but I have to go onto x because I have to post y
5. Turn off those notifications on your iPhone for Facebook, or dare I say it log out of Facebook when you are not using it!
6. Try to segment your time, so that you spend a concentrated amount on a network, then do something else, this means that you are giving 100% to each task rather than 70% the task and 30% Facebook, good tools for this are sites like Sendible where you can schedule your posts for the next week in one go
7. Evaluate what you are doing on your social networks… is it working?  Is it worth doing, or are you just playing about?
8. Make use of tools like bookmarks, so rather than reading an article there and then bookmark it and come back to it later, or email it to yourself
9. Be honest with yourself – are you just on Facebook because you don’t want to do task x?
10. Try allocating x amount of time three times a day to checking your social networks (if you aren’t on it all the time for work)

For those people who have issues with checking emails a lot you are going to struggle with this, but use the same management tools for email as you use for your social networks and you will soon find you have SO much free time that you can play on your social networks again!

Do you have any good tips that you can share?  I’d love to hear in the comments below…