Social Media is great for many things, for networking, branding your image, or just staying up to date on what’s going on in the world.  The problem is that you can lose hours being on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.  You might be searching for certain contacts or trying to optimize your business fan page and then you see the video of the cat flushing the toilet, then you’re gone.  The key to using social media sites is to not get sucked in and lose so much time that you get nothing accomplished!

The best thing to keep in mind is that you need to control social media, not let it control you.  Set aside a specific amount of time to post blogs, respond to tweets, and interact with users.  You can do whatever works best for you, maybe start off at 30 minutes two times a day and see how that works and adjust as needed.  Make sure to use time savers as well, such as Hootsuite or TweetDeck.  These are helpful tools because you can manage your social media sites without seeing everyone else's posts, which is where a lot of people lose time.  Another time saver is to have your posts from Facebook go directly to Twitter.  You can do this by utilizing the Twitter App on Facebook.  Make sure to check your interactions though, so you don’t leave questions or responses unaddressed longer than they should be. 

Here are a few other tips to help you avoid the social media time sink: 

-Find the right social media strategy for your business.  Plan your time.  Know where you are going and what your goals are.

-Stay focused on your business strategy.

-Adopt social media one step at a time.

Time sink seems like it would be relatively easy to avoid, but it isn’t.  You just need to stay focused, do your most important things first, and to remember the social media strategy you came up with along with the business goals.  It will also be helpful to log out of the social media sites when you are done with your allotted time and tasks.  It might take a little time to come up with your scheduled routine, but once you have what works for you, make sure to stick to it!

If you enjoyed reading this, make sure to check out our Whitepaper: Social Networking and Security.

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