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Social Media
Time Management
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Index
CHAPTER I: ...................................................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction to Social Media Time Management .......................................................................................... 3
CHAPTER II: ..................................................................................................................................................... 5
Defining Social Media Goals and Objectives .................................................................................................. 5
CHAPTER III: .................................................................................................................................................... 9
Professional and Personal Social Media Usage .............................................................................................. 9
CHAPTER IV: .................................................................................................................................................. 11
Priorities and Schedule Social Media Task ................................................................................................... 11
CHAPTER V: ................................................................................................................................................... 14
Sticking to Social Media Schedule ............................................................................................................... 14
CHAPTER VI: .................................................................................................................................................. 16
Using Social Media Monitoring for Time Management ............................................................................... 16
APRIL 2011 ISSUE
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Social Media Time Management
CHAPTER I:
Introduction to Social Media Time Management
“Social media is a savior not a nemesis, an asset not a liability, a time saver
not a time killer for ad agency new business” – Michael Gass
Social Media! It is constantly reviving and reinventing with technological
upgrades and updates, providing vivacious platform for companies and
businesses to grow. With your corporation or business actively involved
across mediums and you being the in-charge of ensuring that
communication is always apt and quick, there is surely going to be a huge
challenge for you to keep up with it all. Also, it always makes you question
when how can you do justice to your social media activity without affecting
your regular tasks.
There is a constant need to define how does one make time to deal with mammoth of real-time feeds and
dynamic action that takes place every second, without a moment's delay and not sounding dumb or in
correct! You never know where to begin, what to do, how to prioritize, whom to follow, where to look
for replies, participating in various online forums, etc.
Social media monitoring tools have made your life easier by bringing live feeds from across the web arena,
saving your time from individually tracking certain sites. Measuring, analysing and making sense of these
conversations to pro actively engage with your audience is something that haunts many marketers,
especially the ones who have huge reach and handling many accounts for various clients.
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Social Media Time Management
Here is an attempt to decode how one must manage time to be spent on social media. They are not a
winning formulas, but strong ideas and suggestions which when smartly customised can easily yield
positive results and helps you save a lot of time get wealthy (Time is Money).
Social Media Time Management
Social media time management is not simply tweeting, facebooking, writing or monitoring. It’s a
combination of social media monitoring, measuring, analysing and engaging. A right amount of each of
them is the recipe to become excellent social media community manager.
It must include:
Creating presence Monitoring and maintaining it Posting regular updates Reverting to replies and comments Tracking competitors Formulating new social media plans Increasing your network Boosting fans and followers Exploring newer avenues
The list is endless and cutting down on it is out of question, when you have your audience and industry's
presence scattered all across the web! You have to learn to take all of this and anything new that pops up,
in your stride without losing your mind or patience; so as to bring your brand on top of social media charts!
Social Media Time Management eBook deal at macro, and in certain cases micro level, as to how effectively
to allot time to certain activity to get most out of it in matter in very little time!
“All time management begins with planning.” Tom Greening
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Social Media Time Management
CHAPTER II:
Defining Social Media Goals and Objectives
“Many people fail in life, not for lack of ability or brains or even courage but
simply because they have never organized their energies around a goal.”
Elbert Hubbard
Defining social media goals and objectives has never been easy for any
marketer, because having them measured in the traditional number crunching
manner has never really proved to be of any gain. Each medium is different
and hence, requires unique approach, too! Setting clear and precise goal for
social media will solve half your time management worries. When you know
where you have to head, the calculations about how much efforts need to be
put and time to be taken can be easily defined and understood.
Social media goals play a pivotal role in determining how effectively you can manage time for all your social
media activities. It guides you on which social media platforms to focus on, how regularly to you have to
engage, what tactics you can use, if there is an application that could simplify it for you, etc. Just like your
first one hour at work defines your work for rest of the day, your clearly set social media goals and
objectives determine your time management skills.
Let us take a look at some possible social media goals and objectives:
Build awareness: If you are a start up then, is most essential goal for you. It would involve a whole
of social media communication combinations. You have to first create an audience base. Even
before you can think about engaging, monitoring, your social media aim should be to get loyal fan
following. It would invest a lot of time and energy, especially when dealing with new and unfamiliar
social media sites.
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Buzz about new launch: When you are specifically looking at creating buzz about certain new launch, it clearly means that you already have substantial amount of fan following and now you have to smartly utilise tools to connect and create buzz. Here you quickly identify the platforms to be used, video, images, blogs or news and then engage with your audience about them. You could hold some competition, in which case you would have to clearly define the time line of participation and announcing the winners.
Formulate content strategy: Each time you set to write content for your blog, article, site, ppt, video script, white papers, case studies, twitter, etc you look on the web to see what's current hot topic, recoginse the ongoing trends, topics that users are looking for, etc. It always gives you a fresh idea to write about or at least give it a different outlook. If that is your goal, then you would spend more time monitoring than engaging, which should be quick.
Increase reach:- No matter how big a corporate entity you turn out to be, you would always want to have more and more number of followers and fans on your social network, always ahead of your competitors. It is an ongoing process, so need to make little time for it each day!
“Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.” Lord
Chesterfield
Business development:- It would be, relatively, a long term goal which would yield results in only months to come. But it also demands special attention and certain peculiar marketing skills that would set you apart on social media and lengthen your clientele list. It involves, close monitoring of industry, competitors and demands of your audience, to reach people on correct time when they are looking for you! Demands daily efforts.
Boost sales: Direct sales on social media are extremely rare. It could not be the only goal that one can set. Yes, but you can boost sales by using social media as a supportive tactic. Organise competition, quizzes, games, etc ask people to participate announcing discounts to them on their purchase with you! Social Media doesn't quickly translate in to sales. It is more campaign oriented and through online social direct marketing.
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Research and Development: Social Media playground can prove ideal foundation for R&D. There are millions of complains and suggestions being given away by your people for free. You only have to look closely to pick and choose the correct information that could give some concrete results to aid in your R&D for a product and services or looking for talent acquisition.
Provide training: If you are in training department of a company or are training consultants then, you are definitely using social media for this purpose, regularly. Not just would you have to conduct online training sessions or webinars, but also ensure that more and more people are aware about it to ensure maximum participation. In addition, one also needs to a lot of follow up in terms of how far the training has benefited them and if they wish to sign up for the advance course or need any further assistance. Could require round the clock support, if you have many users or else at least few hours daily.
Recruitment: Social media has proven to a fruitful recruitment point where you can easily connect with right minded people who are in sync with your requirements for certain job profile or position. Zero down on the number of positions that you want to fill in via social media and deadline to meet them and accordingly strategise your social media time management.
“Time is the most precious element of human existence. The successful person knows how to put energy into time and how to draw success from time.” Denis Waitley
Community Creation: So you have a loyal fan following and you are a big brand, it is time you did something different, which brings a lot of human personality in your brand! It is time you created a community of your brand which is not just there in your fan list but are your loyalists and would go out of their way to do write positive about your brand. Making this community strong can do wonders to your brand! Long term goal that demands relentless time and personal level activity you undertake.
Increase traffic to website or blog: Another long term goal which can be accomplished easily when you have a large fan following. Also when your blog or website is guided by proper search engine optimisation solutions can do wonders to traffic to your site. Requires extra efforts when you publish new content.
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Influence opinions: When you want to influence, form or change opinions that people hold about you or others on any particular topic that might be causing harm to your brand, nothing does it better than social media. For this purpose you have to indulge in broken recording slowly but surely, so that it gets registered in the minds of people with extreme ease for longer duration. Well thought through regular social media penetration is a must.
Better customer relationships: In today's world it is your relation with your customer that would see you till the end. It would not only help in customer acquisition but also aids in retention. So quickly solve customer complains, talks to them as a human and not as a high profile brand. This can be done over a period of time on regular basis and one must closely track what your people are hinting you about.
Competitive analysis: Monitoring social media activity of your competitor is a must for any business or domain. One needs to spend enough time daily to track activities of their rivals, do understand where is the tide heading and what is that you can learn or unlearn from them. It also proves fruitful in business development.
Most of the essential goals and objectives of social media are clearly covered in the above mentioned list.
When you have them very clearly demarcated on paper, it enables you to allot time easily leading you to
stay focused and not letting your mind venture in unproductive social media activities.
“Review our priorities, ask the question; what’s the best use of our time right
now?” Alan Lakein
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CHAPTER III:
Professional and Personal Social Media Usage
“The more business a man has to do, the more he is able to accomplish, for he learns to economize his time.” Sir Matthew Hale
So now you are clear in your head what you want to do
with your social media with precise understanding of
what you are going to get out of it. Once that is out of
your way, you need to now determine how much of
personal and professional social media would you
utilise? Would you be handling the company accounts
and yours, too, to boost your company's social media
activity? Or would you keep them for different
purposes? For many employees across the world, this
has turned to a very fundamental question when they
join social media firm and answer to it mostly is a customised Yes.
For each goal to be accomplished on social media you would need to have lot of fans and followers on
various channel. In such a situation, chances are that most of your followers might not support you in
spreading the word or engage every single time. But your employee- the one who is handling social media
communication for you and others who are using it will always do it relentlessly, from time to time to get
maximum exposure to you! So yes, one needs to utilise personal social media usage to boost your
professional one.
Having said that, it doesn't mean that you spam your friend's walls with unwanted and uninteresting
content that puts them off and would even tempt them to 'unfriend' or 'unfollow' you out of frustration.
You have created your online social media circle out of lot trust and efficiency, don't through it way for
your profession. Also too much spamming about your brand or service, will give it a bad face in public.
When it comes to your personal social media usage for professional purpose, there is a thin line between
the spamming and promoting your product or service for the benefit of your peer group.
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One must allot at least one quarter of the time spent on professional social media activities, on their
personal accounts. Typically, it should be done a few minutes or hours after your company has done some
concrete activities online. You must interact with your personal accounts the way you always do and slowly
sync in your company's activity so that you can support it easily and people would never think of you as one
who only promotes his company.
“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we
busy about?” Henry David Thoreau
When you are running a startup business or are an SME, then you are as good as your professional
identity in the beginning. But you need to strive hard and create distinction between the two, letting your
people and the world know that you are on your way to create a huge brand which is going to become a big
hit in time to come. Educate them about what would it does, create an interest in them and leverage how
effective it would be for them. Leverage your personal achievements to your brand but never erase the
uniqueness that it has, enhance it.
Also when there is a new site that has emerged, you can explore it using your personal id, before making
your company's presence felt. It is essential, as it aids you to identify whether this medium holds any
potential of benefiting your brand, what are the platforms that it offers for you to exploit, what kind of
time does it demand, is your audience well connected to this medium and so on. So, both, personal and
professional social media activity can go hand in hand and escalate your brand presence online.
Using your personal social media activity to boost professional is really a personal choice. But we have
heard of many corporate who have laid down guidelines for their employees on their social media conduct.
In these situations, you have no option but to stick to company's social media policies and operate amongst
them. So, go find your personal and professional social media balance.
“Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will
determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you don't let other
people spend it for you.” John Dryden
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CHAPTER IV:
Priorities and Schedule Social Media Task
“If you want to make good use of your time, you've got to know what's most important and then give it all you've got.” Lee Iacocca
Prioritising your social media task is the first move that you must make
every morning. Setting priorities for this dynamic medium is definitely not
easy. The reason likes in its dynamic nature which changes each second
with the movement of your audience, competitor and so on. Hence, you
need to be clear about the goal that you have set and then keep some
room for flexibility that this medium demands. You must prioritise your
work by first monitoring, measuring, analysing and then engaging.
Monitoring: One must monitor at least twice in a day at an interval of 4 hours to say the least. This
monitoring should be an all round one where you would monitor:-
You: Your online social media accounts. Track comments, replies, likes, retweets, etc and then post immediate, replies, too, because you won't be coming back to the same things again, unless there are conversations which need researched answer of you want someone else to take care of it.
Your Product: Track the movements about your product or service on social media. Classify them and quickly allot people to take action, if the conversations are in form of complains or business development, etc. Observe how people have joined and your brand and conversing about it. Is it positive or needs any bucking up from your end.
Your Competitor: As discussed, a very essential part of social media communication activities. Spend more time in monitoring your competitors than you would on yourself. If you find something peculiar make a note and move on to next task! Once you are through with your daily social media activity quota, look over all these notes to identify how they can be utilised for your benefit.
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Your Sector: One needs monitor closely all the activities of your sector. It aids you to identify new emerging trends, gives you insight about what future holds. It also identifies newer opportunities for you to grow. It throws open a lot of doors for you.
Your Influential Audience: Always keep a track of your most influential audience, the bloggers, journalist, writers, twipple, etc. You need to do this to ensure that they are still your loyalist and talking positive things about you, to identify the opportunities to participate in their talks and thrive in limelight for free.
“Take time: much may be gained by patience.”- Latin Proverb
Measuring: Once you have monitored all the essential activities. It is time you leveraged it by measuring it
closely. Measure which sites are proving fruitful to you, which authors are most talkative about you, what
kind of content is working best for you. Also calculate how close you have gotten to your goal and what
extra of different do you need to do this time around to bring in that extra boost. One must spend at least
15 minutes in measuring the monitored results and get concrete conclusions from it to make your next
moves.
Analysing: Analyse how you are performing against your past performance, so that you can identify
whether you are on a correct track or has something gone wrong, terribly. Furthermore, you must analyse
how you are doing as compared to your competitors, so that you can directly compare your achievements
as against theirs. Analysing gives a clear competitive picture showing where you are going wrong and what
needs to be done to fix it. Spend at least 15 minutes analysing.
Engaging: It is the ultimate thing that would actually fetch you any results. All the 'engaging' needs to be
instant and quick. While you monitor and measure, you should be doing a lot of engaging by replying,
commenting, retweeting, etc. But for more specific and planned engaging it is measuring and analysing that
would be guiding stars.
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“Don't wait. The time will never be just right.” - Napoleon Hill
You have to create fresh content for various social media platforms based on the finding from this
measuring and analytics. Then you have to ensure that it is targeted to your audience correctly and there is
a room left for their involvement and participation. Engaging also means enhancing your network
connections and you need to do that constantly, because all your goals and objectives can be achieved only
when there is strong and loyal fan following behind you who listens to you closely.
Once you have prioritised your social media activities for the day depending upon the goal that you are
trying to achieve, then, it is time you set a strict schedule, which you must stick to. You monitoring,
measuring and analysing must not take more than 1 to 2 hours in a day. Engaging based on these actions
should be taken place during this period.
While newer engaging activities that you have planned must be initiated and focused on for another hour
or so, where you can create and share the relevant content. When you share it, obviously you are going to
get instant responses, for which you have to be equally apt in replying. Hence, allot about 10 minutes
about every couple of hours to reverting those mails, comments, participating in linkedin groups, forums,
etc.
All in all within 3 to 4 hours your whole social media time management can be summerised. Be clear about
your goal and it would not be difficult task for your to set priority and schedule your actions in social media.
“The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.” Henry Ward Beeche
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CHAPTER V:
Sticking to Social Media Schedule
“Don't be a time manager, be a priority manager. Cut your major goals into
bite-sized pieces. Each small priority or requirement on the way to ultimate
goal becomes a mini goal in itself.” Denis Waitley
No matter how many New Year resolutions one make, strong promises
that you make to yourself, you always give in to the temptation and
always saying... let me make an exception this time... next time I would
stick to it... It applies to not just people who are on weight loosing spree
or sleeping early or giving up chocolate or not spending too much time
on social media. When you have so many distractions on that single live
screen, it is obviously difficult to stick to you plan and not venture in to
things that you had not planned for.
“Don't start your day untill you have it finished on paper first.” Jim Rohn
No matter how focused you get, when you are monitoring, you tend to hop form one site to another,
following various authors to many other random sites, some for professional interest and others for
personal one. At such a juncture it is essential that you do not lose your focus as that would send your time
management schedule on a toss.
Here are a few tips on how to sticking to your social media schedule:-
Keep your social media planning schedule on your desktop.
Set an alarm. If you usually sit for monitoring at about 11 am then set a daily alarm for 12 noon, which will remind you that you have to be done soon.
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Share you plan with your neighboring colleague and tell him to keep a tab on you, once in a while.
And when he points out that you are overspending your time, then DO NOT get annoyed on him.
Understand that once in a while you may have to dedicate more time to social media and according you have to alter other plans.
Do a daily review of amount of time that you spend on social media and make necessary alterations to your plans accordingly.
Slowly convert this daily review to weekly and analyse how you can gain maximum benefit out of minimum time that can be spent.
Spend less time on non productive sites.
Keep room for changing patterns.
Make a to-do-list on your I Phone or BlackBerry and keep overlooking it, every hour or so.
Add little creativity and customise these tips so that they work best for you and help you stick to the media
plan. All of this put together can definitely help you manage your time well on social media, enabling you to
do everything from monitoring to engaging in a few hours, leaving you time to do other things, too.
“Every year the Web offers up hundreds of new experimental services and
ideas, and while you don’t have time to try them all, if you’re able to
pinpoint the applications with the most traction, your early adopter status
will come with long-term rewards.” – Jennifer Van Grove
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CHAPTER VI:
Using Social Media Monitoring for Time
Management
“The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.” Stephen R. Covey
Social Media Monitoring saves social media time wastage. With millions
of live social media of site and many surfacing day in and out, tracking your activity, and that of your associates or competitors can be simplified with monitoring tool. It tracks every single website fetch the results for you when You are looking for them i.e. in real time.
Omllion's social media monitoring tool pulls real time results from across the social media platforms- blogs, forums, social networks, comments, news, etc on a single dashboard. It enables you to detect sentiments, classify conversations, know top sources, keywords and authors, monitor how certain conversation is unfolding, what your competitor is up to and
activities in your industry, etc. You can then measure and analyse these conversations in matter of minutes in various graphical representations and engaging with them through the dashboard itself. Get started with Omllion and boost your social media growth now:-
Sign up online and within 8 hours you would have your login id and password in your email and you are good to go.
Request for demo and within 48 hours we would arrange one for you!
Visit: http://www.omllion.com.
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