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Gandhi was fond of saying that we all have the same 24 hours in our day; it’s all in how we use them (source). Especially within the last days I often thought about this meaningful comment. Why? Well, I think from time to time we all blunder into a time trap, don’t we? Mine snapped recently due to a lot of work for university – exams and assignments needed to be done. But it was not the university work that caused me headaches from time to time – I rather think it was the little time left for my Social Media activities.

Social Media: A time suck?

Social Media gives me the great opportunity to communicate and share my ideas online. But I am sure you will agree with me that it can be extremely time consuming, too. Social Media activities could easily take over your day if you try to create new content on your blog frequently, want to respond to everyone who leaves a comment on your blog or be up to date what is going on on Facebook or Twitter constantly. And these are only some examples of how Social Media could suck your time (Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism gives a very good overview where conversations take place online in addition to that). But as I had to put the last finishing touches to important university tasks last week I hardly had the time to dive into Web 2.0 too deeply.

Scaling Social Media

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I believe the magic word to get out of the ‘Social Media Time Dilemma’ is Social Media Time Management. Looking for ways of Social Media Time Management I came across a lot of helpful tips. I don’t want to keep it from you; maybe you are hard pressed for time, too, and can benefit from one or another tip. Matt Churchill published my favourite tips. That’s why I’d like to give you a brief overview about them here – if you want to read more about these tips please read his blog post on socialmediatoday.com

§  Find the blogs that are most relevant to you, and stick with them. Prioritize material that will be most beneficial to you, and read other blogs and websites at your leisure later.

§  Restrict Your Twittering in using an application like Tweetdeck and monitoring specific key words related to your field of expertise. This means you don’t need to follow every single conversation that takes place in the group of people you follow and it introduces you to new people who are talking about the same topic.

§  Have a clear out of RSS feeds you don’t read.

§  Manage Your Social Networks and cull the services you don’t use regularly – focus on the few networks that make a difference to your online experience and engage with them more, making contacts will all of a sudden be a heck of a lot easier!

Apart from Matt Churchill’s steps to manage Social Media time more effectively I really liked the simple but useful advice of Chris Brogan who suggests to use the divine tool of WordPress, for instance, to write some posts in advance and schedule them to launch when you are hard pressed for time. Brogan says: “This has proven very valuable on days when I’m too busy with other projects to get a post out, but when I know I’d rather you have something new to consider.”

Blogs about Social Media Time Management

If you like to read more about Social Media Time Management I found some other interesting blogs for you:

Time Management in the Age of Social Media

My Half Hour Social Networking Plan: The First Ten Minutes

The 10-Minute Daily Guide to Building Your Social Media Profile

Social Media Time Management

7 Ways to Own Social Media Before it Owns You

3 STEPS TO BETTER TIME MANAGEMENT OF YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social media time management strategy

If you are generally interested in information about how to listen and in turn, participate transparently, sincerely, and effectively in social media and new media marketing I recommend reading Brian Solis’ eBook ‘The Essential Guide to Social Media’.

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At the end I almost missed one essential tip I found out: Set Social Media time and log off when that time is over. Well then, I log of for today

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It’s amazing! Without great effort I’m already an integral part of the Web 2.0 business economy. Because of my blog? Far from it. Because of my facebook profile? Far from it. There’s a much more simple reason for it. Let’s check some of my web activities within the last week:

Monday: I sent an email via Windows
Life Messenger and bought some books at amazon.co.uk

Tuesday: I sold my old mobile phone on ebay and bought some DVDs there

Wednesday: I searched for information on Wikipedia and googled a journal article

Today: I called my friends in Germany via Skype

I could easily go on like this! To put it into a nutshell: There has been hardly any day within the last weeks… months…let’s say even the last year (maybe even years?) without network
effects caused through my usual web activities.

Curse and blessing of ‘traffic’

I really like the following quote of Amy
Shuen in her book ‘Web
2.0: A Strategy Guide – Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web
2.0 implementations.’ (by the way: as this is already my second quote of Shuen’s book you see I’m really satisfied reading it. It’s a great, very well written book I really like to recommend to every PR student who deals with Web 2.0) “FOR MOST OF US IN THE REAL (OFFLINE) WORLD, TRAFFIC IS A BAD THING. More cars on the highway at rush hour create negative network effects. Each driver reduces the quality of the experience by congesting and overloading the highway network past its limit. But in the online world, traffic is a powerfully good thing.” Just try to picture it! Her figure of speech is great.

 

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What Shuen refers to: There’s no doubt that positive network effects increase the value of a good or service the more people use it (To get an idea of it: A well known theory illustrating this is Metcalfe’s
law stating about the value of communication). Positive network effects created the Web 2.0 network platforms and contributed the online hypergrowth of networks such as Google, Yahoo!, ebay, Skype, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Flickr and other.

Apropos: Why not watch Amy
Shuen talking about network effects herself? For me it was very interesting to see this famous lecturer in person – but be aware that it’s more an informative video than an animating film! Suen has
got a blog, too. Unfortunately, it has not been updated for a longer period of time.

What comes to your mind first?

Let’s go back to where I started: I just followed this train of thought about my web activities within the last week because it seems to me as if many people think they aren’t a part of the Web 2.0 business economy at first glance. In fact, they are! Just to give you an idea about two of the web services I used last week: ebay counts 86 million active and Skype 400 million registered users (see
source).

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Not bad! Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling that people first notice all these social networks like Facebook or MySpace when thinking about Web 2.0. activities. I sometimes even catch me thinking the same although I know it better!