Time Management and Social Media Marketing

The Closet Entrepreneur by Kendra Leah Fuller

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Do you sit down at your computer to take care of your social media marketing and look up to find that an hour or two, or maybe more, has flown by? There is no question our time spent on social media, personally and professionally, is growing.

If you look at my contact page, you will see no less than six different social profiles that you can connect on with me. This list does not include LinkedIn yet, so that puts us up to seven. When I set up my Google+ profile it gave me the ability to create pages, so I added two of those. Google states that the Google+ profiles are supposed to be used for personal reasons only, thus the reason I set up the pages. From what I can see, people do not follow this rule and I am really thinking about eliminating those separate pages – just two more things to look after.

Rule 1 – Do NOT Allow Yourself to be Distracted by Social Media
When I put together my writing plan for 2014, I made a summary of my goals and how I was going to achieve them, then hung it on the wall by my desk for a quick reminder. At the very top of the list, “Do NOT allow yourself to be distracted by social media!!!” There are more exclamations points on my sheet, but you get the gist. When I get up in the morning, I like to grab my cup of coffee and spend some wake up time catching up on my personal social networks. From there, I usually move on to my business networks. Where I can easily get caught up is on LinkedIn reading different discussions that I feel may be useful to my writing career. When I feel I can help someone else, I usually chime in with some advice but this leads to following the entire conversation. I have found that one way I can limit the time I spend on LinkedIn is by turning off some of the different email notifications that suck me in.

Social Media Management for Writers

 

Click to Print if you sometimes need a reminder, too.

Rule 2 – Only Spend 30 Minutes Per Day on Social Media Marketing
This is really an extension of rule 1. However, I seem to have a very hard time following this. I knew I needed to set a time limit for myself because not only do I get caught up engaging on social media, I am a perfectionist, so I am constantly finding something I need to improve about my profile or page.

Rule 3 – Write 500-1,000 Words Every Day
If I follow rules 1 and 2, all goes well and I am writing by 8:00 in the morning (provided I do not call my mother, sister, daughter, or vice versa). Once I start writing, this daily goal is very easy to meet and usually exceeded. If I follow rules 1 and 2.

Rule 4 – Write First, Market Later
After examining my cheat sheet of self made rules, I do believe I’ve discovered my problem. Rule 4 should be Rule 1. So, I am going to rewrite my own rules and try to strictly adhere to them. It seems maybe Rule 4 is all I really need.

WRITE FIRST – MARKET LATER

This rule can apply to any business, not just writing. Now, if only I had not spent all afternoon creating this infographic. A task made much more time consuming by an Adobe program that was not cooperating! Should I refer myself back to Rule 1?

See Related Posts: #socialmedia #marketing #advertising

 

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