5 Ways to Sidestep the Social Media Sinkhole

True or False: Social media is an entertaining sinkhole where time flies and nothing productive ever happens.

Depending on the day, the answer could be true or false. Here are five ways to manage your social media time to make it more enjoyable, productive and profitable for you and your followers.

1. Be Choosey
Know who you want to talk to – and why.
After friends and family, prioritize who it’s important to reach. Are you looking for clients, vendors, venues, meeting planners, sponsors, or associations? Why do you want to connect with them? The answer should be what’s in it for them, not for you. Use LinkedIn’s advanced search tool to track down everyone you want to connect with.
Tool: LinkedIn

2. Be Selective
Choose one, at the most two or three, platforms to be great at.
Hint: LinkedIn is a good first choice. Ask your best clients, connections, or even colleagues what platforms they hang out on. Then, listen and join in on the conversation. Keep in mind that images get shared more often than text. If you’re looking for an image-based social network, try Instagram. It’s an easy way to share images with Facebook, twitter, email, Foursquare and tumblr – all at once. There’s even a live feed event tool.
Tool: Evenstagr.am

3. Be on time
How do you know when to post social media updates so that they’ll reach the most people? How do you know what your people want to read? To get the answers, sign up for a free Buffer account. Buffer will automatically send your updates out at peak times. And, you’ll get analytics that measure interest.
Tool: BufferApp.com

4. Be consistent
Do you workout? How? Do you take a regularly scheduled class, go to a gym, dance to DVDs in your living room, or walk your dog a few times a day? However you exercise, you know that moving everyday is important. So is checking in on social media. Set aside a time every day to exercise your social media routine. Using a dashboard like Hootsuite, you can manage multiple accounts all at once. You can even enter and schedule updates for future delivery.
Tool: Hootsuite.com

5. Be Powerful
This is relative. While you may think what you know is ordinary and common, to someone else you are the exact genius they’ve been looking for. Why? You have the answers to their questions. Think of social media as a power tool that enables you to share knowledge, calibrate positioning, increase profitability, measure results, and save time.

To get you started building your social media toolbox, here’s a list of low cost or no cost social media measurement tools.

About the Author: Barbara Rozgonyi leads CoryWest Media, a women-owned strategic marketing consultancy that attracts attention, builds brands and connects communities with the WIRED system. A founding member of Social Media Club Chicago, Barbara is a keynote speaker, social media/LinkedIn trainer, and a business development coach. For more ideas and resources, visit Barbara’s top 50 marketing and PR blog, http://wiredPRworks.com. Connect with Barbara on social media at http://about.me/barbara.rozgonyi.