Five tips to beating social media overload

Yesterday I was emailed over facebook by a follower of this blog. I still get a kick when people touch base and tell me that they actually read everything I write up here. The gentleman that emailed (lets call him Frank) wanted to know how to manage all your social networks and still have a life afterwards.

Too much time spent on social media could mean less return on investment

Frank has stumbled accross a very important element of social media that is often under-rated. Social media is addictive and time consuming. Especially if you are marketing through social media. This only gives us a better reason to be ‘wasting or time‘ on our favourite network.

If you want to make sure you optimise your time on networks like Facebook and Twitter here are a few tips that may help:

1. Give yourself a time frame to spend in social media and stick to it. After your time is up – Close the web browser/programme.
2. Use a Twitter Client. This helps because twitter clients are designed in such a way that you can tailor the information you recieve from twitter. This means you get less distracted. Twitter clients are now starting to offer Facebook, Linkedin and Ping.fm integration.
3. Have a social media free day – Every now and then, spend a day away from social media. This helps in many ways, but the most important one for me is clarity. When I leave social media for a day, I start thinking about the marketing exercises that really work.
4. Don’t flog a dead horse – If your new social media campaign is not giving you the RIO you need, stop!! Rather spend your time focusing on what works.
5. Automate – Automate everything you can without damaging you campaign. Be careful here because some automation could provide less return than if you did the marketing personally.