“THERE’S NOT ENOUGH TIME!”
When bombarded with ALL the social media sites, how often does the little voice in your head scream this fearful reality?
You can *conquer all obstacles* and stifle this fear by learning how to manage your time.
Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management<
Today, I’d like to introduce my guest blogger who sets his schedule very similar to mine. Actually, when I read his post, I thought it was mine…lol.
Colin Welch
COLIN WELCH is the Training Manager at Silicon Beach Training in Brighton.
How to Manage Social Media Activity
Your Social Media Management Schedule:Ever feel a bit intimidated by the fast pace of social media and the sheer volume of it all? Our Social Media Training, Blogging and SEO Training courses are a good starting place if you’re new to blogging, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn WordPress and the like. But once you are up and running it’s still very easy to feel alarmed – but have no fear we have a solution!
It doesn’t matter how many tweets you make a day or how often you write a blog, as long as you plan your activity and break it down into simple stages. For those who struggle with this, consider our Time Management Training. A recent blog post listed the 50 most common social media mistakes and number one is “lack of planning” – planning your social media activity is crucial!
If you find yourself wondering “how do I manage my social media activity most efficiently?” then read on for our example schedule of what you can do throughout the day, once daily, weekly and monthly.
An example schedule for managing social network sites and activity: 1. Social Media Activities – throughout the day- Tweet and respond to tweets/retweets: Tools such as TweetDeck and HootSuite are great ways to manage Twitter (see our blog post discussing the benefits of each), and if there’s a topic you want to keep an eye on you can create a search column using the related hashtag.
- Respond to blog comments on your own blog posts
A handy tool such as TweetDeck will create a pop up notification for new tweets as they happen – this helps you to keep on top of your tweeting and retweeting throughout the day. Although if you find this distracting, it can be a good idea to put aside a couple of short time slots during the day and do a quick blast of retweets, replies and link-sharing. HootSuite is a useful tool here too, as it allows you to schedule your tweets for later.
2. Social Media Activities – at least once daily- Check Facebook: Check your profile, pages and groups and respond as appropriate.
- Add bookmarks: Scan what’s popular on bookmarking and recommendation sites such as Delicious, Digg and Mixx and add your own bookmarks (read this handy blog post about building links for free and why bookmarking sites are so useful).
- Check your subscriptions and RSS feeds: Netvibes is a useful tool for keeping on top of your RSS feeds and Google Reader subscriptions can be a good way to monitor updates – then make sure you share/tweet anything of interest to your followers.
- Check your stats: Google Analytics is the main choice but there a other tools out there – try MyBlogLog for trending links and real time information on stumbles. See our Google Analytics Course and Advanced Google Analytics Course if you need help with this.
Ping.fm is a useful tool worth mentioning here; it allows you to update dozens of social media sites through its easy to use interface, so it’s a huge time saver – read more in this blog post summary.
3. Social Media Activities – weekly- Write a new blog post: Download the WordPress plugin for automatic Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed updates, and get it circulating. If you need help with WordPress, take a look at our WordPress Training.
- Comment on blogs: Comment on relevant blogs – this is also an opportunity to promote your new blog post.
- Check LinkedIn: Look out for relevant groups and discussions to participate in, and respond to Questions in your network – and again, promote your new blog post.
- Organise Twitter: Organise who you’re following on Twitter by grouping them into lists (and update these lists regularly) e.g. industry leaders or favourite photographers – see our Twitter lists for ideas.
- Scan Google Alerts: Look out for mentions of your name or brand – you can do this in a Google Reader RSS feed, and then respond as appropriate.
Weekly actions will require too much time to be doing them on a daily basis; things like writing a blog post may require keeping an eye on the news and trending topics, as well as research.
You may wonder why it’s worth taking time to participate in others’ discussions. Well the more generous you are, the more willing people will be to join your discussion or reply to your questions when you are promoting your services or a new blog post. See Heather’s post on the art of generous blogging.
As for how often you should blog, at Silicon Beach Training we aim to blog more than once a week, but it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you’re consistent – regular blogs will build your readership and keep them coming back (see Jodi’s post on keeping your blog regular). If you’re on a roll with your blogging then consider writing a few in one day and scheduling when they’re posted.
4. Social Media Activities – monthly- Find new Twitter follows: Try using MrTweet for recommendations or have a browse on Yellow Pages style service Twellow.
- Upload a video or photos: TubeMogul is like Ping.fm for video, a handy tool providing a single point for distributing videos to the top video sharing sites as well as providing analytics.
- Share content: We share content on our Free Resources page but social publishing tools like SlideShare or Scribd (allowing you to share documents, PowerPoint presentations and PDFs) could broaden who you reach out to, as a helpful blog post explains.
The monthly actions will take significant time, and which ones you choose will depend on your business and interests. It can be helpful if you’re working in a team – that way you can share your work load and create a schedule for who’s doing what (see our Social Media Guidelines for an example social media strategy for businesses).
The various social media management tools we’ve listed are just suggestions and we only use a few regularly – you can see just how many there our on our comprehensive list of social media links – just choose the ones that work for you and, most importantly, don’t panic! Whatever you do it all comes down to two things: consistency and monitoring i.e. checking mentions of your brand and responding to comments.
Of course our social media action plan is limited – is there any action you would add or any tool you couldn’t manage social media without?
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For more information about Colin Welch and Silicon Beach Training go to: http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk
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