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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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Golden seashore, blue ocean made of sparkling breakwater, warm sunbeams stroking your skin – finally, the tropical dream came true. Unfortunately, not for me but for the British charity fundraiser Ben Southall, 34: He was one of the 16 finalists who recently spend three days swimming, snorkeling, diving and lounging under the close scrutiny of Queensland Tourism officials. They psychometrically tested the candidates for the ‘Best Job in the World’, the ‘Islandreef Job’ (read my recent posts number one and number two about the competition to get more information and the latest press release published by Queensland Tourism). Ben Southall staved off competition from almost 35,000 worldwide applicants to secure the post and was awarded the $150,000 (£73,000) contract beginning July 1 to serve as the caretaker of a tropical Australian Island. He now has the chance to swim, explore and relax on Hamilton island, in the Great Barrier Reef, for six months while writing a blog to (source: The Guardian). If you like to read his blog click here.

A successful social media campaign and its imitators

The recruitment for the ‘Best Job in the World’ was part of Tourism Queensland’s Islands of the Great Barrier Reef Campaign. The cooperative marketing campaign aimed to highlight the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef and showcase Australia’s own unique Island experience, to the global market (source: press release published by Tourism Queensland). I think, I don’t need to tell you again that influential newspapers like The Guardian, The Mirror or BBC or German newspapers like Der Spiegel or Der Focus picked up the story once more among other media. According to Der Spiegel the marketing campaign exceeded all expectations of Tourism Queensland: Tourism director Anthony Hayes is of the opinion that there will be more bookings within the next 12 month at the end of the campaign. Probably the ranger casting will become an annual event? In anyway, there are already imitators of the campaign: According to Der Spiegel Taiwan thinks about starting a similar competition to promote its tourism.

‘The moral of the story’

What remains to say? As mentioned in earlier posts the ‘Islandreef Job’ competition was a striking campaign idea which was based on some remarkable PR and marketing decisions like the concept of the admirable independent blogger like you and me, the integration of the audience in the voting and the content-rich website (read my recent blog post) and supported by social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube (read my recent blog post). Doubtlessly, a short-term campaign success. Will it become a long-term success, too? Only time can tell.

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Golden seashore, blue ocean made of sparkling breakwater, warm sunbeams stroking your skin … Admittedly, I’m catched in this summer-like daydream again! I got lost in it for the first time when I recently blogged about the ‘The Best Job in the World, the ‘Island Reef Job’. The idea about earning £70,000 for blogging about the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef/ Australia while living rent-free in a three-bedroom villa, complete with pool on Hamilton Island is tempting if you look out of the window and all you see are trees and shrubs devastated by the stormy weather. Quite apart from the rain.

Wild Card candidate selected

But stop building castles in the air! I promised to keep an eye on the competition of Tourism Queensland for you. After the top-50-shortlist from over 34,000 applicants for the job was announced on the website some time ago, the Wild Card candidate for the final round of the competition has now been selected by the visitors of the website: It’s Claire from Taiwan. “Clare has done a remarkable job of promoting her quest for the Best Job in the World in Taiwan and has become an overnight media celebrity. She has been in virtually every newspaper, on every TV network in the country, plus online media and social networking sites”, says Tourism Queensland CEO Anthony Hayes in a recent press release.

All up 475,855 votes were received during the Wild Card voting process. Clare received 151,676 votes – almost three times that of her nearest competitor, Mitchell from Canada who received 55,532 votes, followed by George from Ireland with 30,372 votes.

A successful social media campaign

Influential news papers like ‘Der Spiegel’, Germany, reported on the progress of the competition again (just a quick reminder: the winner will be named on May 6^th 2009). As far as today the Island Reef Job seems to be still a very successful social media campaign. For instance, Queensland Tourism set up profiles relating to the Island Reef Job on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube (further information about Facebook, Twitter and Youtube on Wikipedia).

I’d like to pick up Queensland’s profile on Facebook as it is an interesting example to show that Facebook is not just a social networking site for students anymore but a great place for companies to communicate, too: Queensland’s Facebook page aims to help visitors share, plan and organize their trip to go there.

Facebook – a communication opportunity for companies

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With regard to Facebook marketing David Meerman Scott* names different useful ways to deliver information and ideas to a network of people who are interested in a certain topic of which two can be found on Queensand’s profile, too:

1. Friend-to-friend communication: In its personal profile Queensland is promoted as a amazing travel destination. You learn about the country and get reasons why it might be rewarding to travel there, for example.
2. Groups: Queensland keeps interested people informed on their profile (additional material include e.g. e-brochures and podcasts). Currently, it has got about 4.500 fans who actively take part in the communication process as you can see on the wall.

You see, Facebook can be an interesting marketing tool for companies. The following quote of Walter Doyle, CEO of uLocate, puts it in a nutshell very well: “People are sensitive to corporate content. It’s okay to be corporate if it is funny. Entertainment, fun, simple, and whimsical are all good.”  In other words: The experience on Facebook has to be very simple and devoid of commercialization. Indeed!

*Book: The New Rules of Marketing & PR – How to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing & online media to reach buyers directly’