Social Media: Maximize Productivity in Minimal Time
10/8/2009
By Jessica Lybeck
Till Creative
Not unlike an ambitious New Year's resolution, a social media campaign always starts with good intentions.
You plan on being active every day, sticking to it and reaping those long term benefits: increased exposure for you and your clients, valuable feedback, new business leads and increased Web site traffic. Sounds great, right?
Unfortunately, just like those resolutions, it's easy to fall off the social media wagon. The daily workday is full of tight deadlines, demanding clients and an endless stream of e-mails. Most likely you barely have time for lunch -- let alone sitting on Twitter all day. Defeated, you may find yourself asking, "How am I going to actually do this?
The simple answer? Create a plan and commit to it.
Just because social media is largely informal, erratic and doesn't fit into traditional marketing molds, doesn't mean you can't approach it with the same systematic discipline used in business. You wouldn't approach a new client without detailing your plan of attack so why should social media be any different?
A well thought-out plan will prevent you from getting off track and ensure your valuable resources (i.e. time and money) are spent where they matter most.
Here are a few tips to help you tackle the social media labyrinth:
Evaluate your goals
Why are you participating in social media in the first place? Are you using it for networking, research, sales and marketing, or a combination? Define your goals and then point all activities in that direction. If you're skeptical about the relevancy of a certain Web site or activity - drop it. There's no sense spending time attracting apples when you should be out looking for oranges.
Choose your Sites
There are thousands of places to start conversations online, but you should only make time for a few. To filter out the riffraff, think about where your target or customer spends most time online and focus your energy on those sites only. This streamlined focus prevents you from spreading yourself too thin - as it's much better to create quality content in two to six sites rather than poor material on 15.
Get started by viewing a comprehensive list of the top social media Web sites at www.seomoz.org.
Outline Specific Tasks
Once you've decided on relevant sites, how often will visit each one? What will you do? How will you do it? Start by breaking down larger tasks into smaller bites. For example, the task of simply tweeting on Mondays and Wednesdays is too broad to be efficient. But if you break tweeting down into 10 news article tweets, five personal comments, three self and affiliate promotion tweets, and two interesting quote tweets on Mondays and Wednesdays, you're sure to stay focused on the task at hand.
Create Systems
Bust out your spreadsheet skills and translate different sites and tasks into a "roadmap" to navigate your social media activities. First break up tasks into a daily, weekly or monthly calendar to keep track of your engagement. This helps solidify social media from open-ended conversations into tasks which can be completed. A bonus? It's always satisfying to cross something off your list.
Stay Focused
This seems like a no-brainer, but if you've spent time on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or any other social media site you know that it's quite easy to let your mouse wander. Try keeping your distractions to a minimum by separating social media from your normal business activities. For example, use FutureTweets to condense your Twitter and social media conversations between 8-9 a.m. -- before e-mail starts pouring in and your time is pulled in 12 directions.
But if you still find yourself falling down the social media rabbit hole, you may be better off simply putting strict limits on the amount of time you spend. Browser plugins such as Leechblock and PageAddict are helpful compliments to a meandering mouse. You can set a daily limit to viewing specific sites, forcing your mind to stay focused on accomplishing more tasks in less time.
Evaluate then Automate
Once you get in the swing of things, it's helpful to take a moment to think about how you could improve your social media routine to accomplish more with less. This could include making clickable "link lists" to navigate various sites or create content archives. There are also many online tools designed specifically to help you be more productive. Here are a few of my favorites:
• Rescuetime - Allows you to view charts and graphs of daily computer-related activity
• Google Docs - Allows team members to co-write, modify and view documents
• Ping.fm - Allows you to update your status across dozens of social media sites through a simple
interface.
• RSS - delivers interesting content such as your favorite blogs, podcasts and search terms directly to
the newsreader of your choice.
Measure and Modify
It's easy to forget about those initial goals, but it's good to ask yourself on a regular basis, "Have I been successful in my social media pursuits?" If the answer is “yes,” do a celebratory dance and keep moving forward. If the answer is “no,” it's time to adjust your plan to achieve better results.
You can track success by keeping a running tally of results alongside your spreadsheet such as daily Web site traffic or customer inquiries. For example, Google Analytics might tell you that you are receiving a ton of traffic from Twitter, but very little from your activities on LinkedIn. Over a period of time, you might shift some of your time away from LinkedIn so that you can zero-in on more Twitter success - thus improving your ROI.
Having a disciplined systematic approach to social media can surely save you time, money and a little slice of sanity. In the long run, it also means you can more easily pass the torch to a "community manager" or team member when the need arises, as your daily activities are now clearly defined and documented. And who doesn't want to eventually split the social media burden?
So before you cast social media aside because you're "just too busy" -- take a step back, think about what you want to achieve and lay out the bite-size steps to get there.
Your business will surely thank you for it.
Jessica Lybeck is the Founder of Till Creative, a marketing strategy firm based in Chicago. She helps businesses and entrepreneurs focus, develop and market their big ideas. If you are just starting to dip your toe in the social media waters, or would like to tweak your current campaign, you can learn more at www.tillcreative.com or feel free to reach out to her directly at jessica@tillcreative.com.