Humans are creatures of routine. From brushing our teeth in the morning, to grabbing a coffee on the way to work. Even the most ramshackled and disorganised amongst us have at least a vague order to their lives. And you should try and have the same when managing social media.
Every week I have a list of certain things I do as part of a social media routine. From checking @ mentions on Twitter, to writing my blogs. Some I do daily, some I do weekly. As much as I can I try and do them on a particular day. I find it’s the only way I engage properly in these social media forums.
For example, until recently I didn’t have any kind of system for LinkedIn. I have now started one. It takes me 20 minutes, once a week, but it has made a world of difference. Now that I’m properly engaging on a regular basis I’m starting to see results, make new connections, and understand things better. Opportunities are opening up in front of me.
It can be hard to start a routine. You have to be ruthless about it. Write down the list of things you need to do, and set days you need to do them. If you miss a week, don’t beat yourself up, but try to get back in to the routine as soon as possible. It’s just like going to the gym – the more time you have off, the harder it is to get started again. And also like the gym, the longer you keep your routine, the better you become and the more results you see.
I quite like this list from LinkedIn about how to organise your routine, although you’ll find quite a lot of them only relevant if you have really large followings. For me, my routine looks something like this:
Daily
- Check @ mentions on Twitter and reply where appropriate
- Check likes and comments on Facebook and respond where appropriate
- Check comments on my blogs and respond where appropriate
Weekly
- Write blog posts and schedule to go live throughout the week
- Check Google Reader for the blogs I follow, and schedule tweets about the articles I like to go out throughout the week
- Add articles to my Delicious stacks that might make interesting blog posts for later
- Find more people to follow on Twitter, and clear out the ones that no longer interest me
- Review at least one of my Twitter lists each week and connect with anyone tweeting interesting things
- Upload new content to Facebook
- Start a discussion on one of my social media channels
- Check LinkedIn groups for interesting discussions to join in on
- Find more LinkedIn groups to join, and clear out the ones that no longer interest me
- Connect with new people on LinkedIn
This might seem like a lot, but I generally find that once you get in to routine with it, the whole lot (excluding the researching and writing of blog posts) won’t take much more than an hour. That gives you at least 36 other hours in the week to focus on the rest of your work. Now who said social media was time consuming?