picture credit to nofatclips

“I just don’t have time to do more in my day!”

Does this sound familiar? If you find yourself struggling to find time for online networking, it might be time to take a second look at your schedule. I’ve compiled some ways you can find the time in your day for 15 minutes of social media, if you have more ideas, please share in the comments.

1. Get up 15 minutes earlier. It’s not a lot and you can use those early morning minutes to tweet, check your Facebook fan page and update your LinkedIn profile.

2. Cut into your lunch. Eat a little faster and spend the extra time on social media. I often have lunch with my cyber friends.  Nothing wrong to send some tweets in between bites.

3. Make the most of your commute. Stuck in traffic? Hanging out on the subway? Use those moments to network with others . . . they all add up!

4. Use your bathroom breaks. Before heading back to the couch, office or wherever you’re going, take a moment to update your status. If you spend one minute each time you head to the washroom, you’ll rapidly add up to the allotted amount of time.

5. Network during commercials. Did you know that the average television show has at least 8-10 minutes of commercials? If you jump on social media during the commercials, you’ll easily gain around 20 minutes every hour.

6. Update while you walk the dog. Mobile devices mean we can network anywhere and what could be a better way to multi-task than to tweet or update your Facebook while getting some exercise?

7. Skip television. Why not turn the TV off and get promoting your business, instead? While you can tweet and such during commercials, actually leaving the television off is even better for productivity.

8. Stay up 15 minutes later. Those extra minutes won’t really affect your sleep, but they could have a major impact on your online social status.

9. Carpool. By letting someone else drive sometimes, you can easily use up your travel time on a social media site or two. Just don’t forget to talk, too, or no one will want to share rides with you!

10. Workout body and social media. My best posts have been written when I’m working out on the treadmill. So, turn off the TV or the radio and workout your social media presence too.

11. Treat it as email. If you’re the formal type that needs to set aside a proper time for everything. Then you want to treat your social media presence like email.  So before you check your emails, open Twitter and reply to all important direct messages and replies, do the same with Facebook, Linkedin, Blog comments and whatever else you got yourself into.

If finding time for social media has been your excuse, you now know how to find that extra time in your day. You don’t need to spend hours and hours on Twitter to be effective. In fact, if you only have a 15 minute chunk of time during the day, you can set your posts to publish throughout the day, giving the impression of being online far more often than your situation actually allows for.

Don’t let excuses hold you back!