Today I want to share with you three little-known social media time management secrets.
Tip number one, use social media just like you would any other communication platform. Let me give you an example. Remember when email first came out and we all checked our email once in a blue moon. And when you got an email it was like, “I got an email”
Now we check our email all the time, in the morning, in the evening, it’s just part of what we do. Someone calls us we call them back. Someone texts us we text them back. You want to think of social media in that same regard. It is a communication channel. Now that doesn’t mean you have to be on it 24 hours a day but just think about it as any other communication channel. If you normally check your email in the morning, later on in the afternoon, in the evening, then your social media habits should follow in that regard. So, I like to check it a few minutes in the morning, a few minutes as I’m eating lunch, a few minutes in the evening. Just sort of spread it out throughout the day.
Tip number two is to focus five. Focus five is this, if you only have a few minutes a day to really think about a social media platform, pick one platform and engage with five people on that platform. If I only have a few minutes and I’m on Facebook really quick, instead of thinking about what am I going to post. I’m going to think about, who are the five people I can engage with? Can I wish five people a happy birthday? Can I wish two people a happy birthday and two people congratulations and one person I can comment on their photo. Think about where there are opportunities to focus five. The reason why I say focus five is because it’s super easy, it’s digestible, and over the course of time what you’re doing is you’re building relationships with people, and you’re engaging. The best way for people to be interested in you is for you to be interested in others. Don’t just click like five times, take the time to be intentional and to focus on five people every single day. I try to do that either on SnapChat, Instagram, Facebook, whatever your platform is of choice.
Tip number three is make a plan. That’s the biggest time management secret I can give you. If you don’t have a plan, if you don’t take time to plan your social media strategy, what will happen is every single day you will go through this cycle of, “Gosh what should I post today? I don’t know what to post.” And then you’ll get sucked into the vortex of social media. So, you have to take time to plan out your strategy. What platforms are you going to be on? What type of content are you going to create? How often are you going to post? Whose going to manage that? It takes time to create the plan, but once you’ve created a plan, it makes all of this so much easier. How do I sit down once a month and shoot four or five videos all in one shot? It’s because I’ve got the plan. It’s because I took time to figure out the type of content that we were going to post earlier in the year. Getting the plan in place it takes more time in the beginning to create that plan but boy is it a huge time saver as you start to implement as the year goes on.
A quick bonus tip for you when it comes to time management and I gotta give a big shout out to one of our Academy members John Sloan, he is part of our #GetSocialSmart Academy, and his big secret that I love is, he dedicates an hour a day to social media. He’s very focused on that, he’s got it on the schedule, an hour a day. That way he treats it like almost any other appointment and that way he’s really focused on checking his notifications, engaging with people, posting content, using his list, and any other tools that he has to be really effective when it comes to social media.
As always, if you like this video we would love if you would like, comment, and share. Share with other people that you think would benefit from learning more about social media. If you have questions for us leave that in the comments below.
