picture credit to time managment central.net

Having trouble figuring out how to keep from spending too much time on social media? While it’s a great way to ensure that you have plenty of exposure, your business can’t run on social media alone. That means good time management skills are required and you have to carefully plan your time on any social media site to be successful.

Ideally, you will have a schedule to follow. That might be just 15 minutes a day on LinkedIn, or it could be an hour a day spread out over several social media sites. The choice is yours and it really depends on how much you need to dedicate to other areas of your business.

To make the most of your time online, try:

Keeping track of your posts. Whatever you do online, make sure you track it. This will help you remember what you did before and avoid repeating yourself.

Set up multiple feeds. Having your Twitter posts automatically appear on Facebook is a great way to save time and boost the impact of everything you say and do online.

Have a plan. By writing down your social media goals and then working out a plan, you can stay focused and it will help keep you from getting distracted, something that is very easy to do when you are online!

Keep the noise to a minimum. It might be fun to follow a gazillion people who tweet about stuff you’re interested in, but if you’re on social media for business, stick to following those who are specifically for business.

Stick to it. Don’t drop out of social media for a while and then try to come back. It takes  a lot more energy and focus each time to recover your previous position. Instead, keep up the momentum and stay on top of things.

Get a timer. If you have a hard time remembering to stop working after a couple of minutes, make sure you set your timer to remind you when the time is up. This can be done several times a day, or you can work on social media for a steady block of tiem.

Figure out what works. Everyone is different. You might have a hard time working for 10 minutes at a time, so if an hour of solid time works best, go with that. There’s no hard and fast rule.

There are so many things to distract you while you’re online that it can be easy to sit down to work for an hour and end up spending three hours chatting or commenting on Facebook or tweeting with friends. Proper time management and planning will help you stay on track.

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