IMA Blog: Leveraging Social Media While Preserving Your Sanity

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Leveraging Social Media While Preserving Your Sanity Posted: 30 Jan 2012 08:22 PM PST The rise of social media is undoubtedly the most powerful trend to shake the marketing world in recent years. As I've discussed on numerous occasions before, it allows you unprecedented levels of marketing and brand awareness that costs nothing but your time, it allows you to connect directly with your customers, and most importantly, it allows you to incorporate their feedback into your marketing strategy to present each potential customer with a sales pitch specifically targeted to meet their needs. However, all the doesn't come without a downside. The cost of social media marketing is that you have to constantly create new, engaging, informative content, you have to constantly stay abreast of the latest trends and industry conversations, and you have to build relationships not only with your potential customers, but with industry peers and thought leaders as well. None of this is extremely difficult, but it can be a black hole as far as your time goes. Bloggers and internet marketers who want to stay on top of the game are finding that just keeping on top of social media is taking a larger and larger share of each day. Take the head off the beast before it consumes your whole day by implementing a few simple changes. Prioritise At the end of each day, decide what you want to accomplish the next day, and prioritise it. For example, say that you have 2 hours each day to work on your social media strategy. Decide ahead of time what the make-up of those 2 hours will be, and what you will accomplish during the time frame. For example, you might say: 0.5 hours – write a blog post, 0.5 hours – read RSS, 1 hour – read and respond to Tweets and Facebook updates. Unexpected diversions will come up, but just incorporate them into your priorities. This will allow you to minimise their negative impact. Schedule Set times for certain activities, and stick to them. Productivity is negatively affected by anxiety, and if you're worrying about your emails while you're trying to generate new content for your blog, you won't generate the content as well. Set a time for each activity, and set a maximum amount of time that you'll spend on each one. Typically it makes sense to check your email twice per day, and definitely no more than once per hour. I like to opt for first thing in the morning, as reading email is typically one of the easier tasks of the day, and then again in the afternoon. But don't just take mine – make a schedule that works for you, and stick to it. Focus As the old cliché tells us, multitasking is simply doing several activities poorly. Don't confuse yourself into thinking multitasking is a valid option. It's definitely possible, but your performance will suffer and things will end up taking you twice as long. Thanks!   Sean Internet Marketing Academy Internet Marketing Training – Internet Marketing Course – Internet Marketing Blog

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