Schedule Time to Update Your Social Media Accounts

Business professionals today must stay active on social media to stay in touch with customers and network within their own industries. Finding and scheduling time for your social media updates is vital if you want to send a message to the world that you are current and ready for business. Use these time management tips for updating your social media accounts.

Choose Your Social Media Platforms and Strategy Wisely

If you plan your social media strategy thoughtfully, you minimize the time necessary to stay up to date online. Start by choosing which social media platforms you want to be on professionally. While some people are able to convey an online persona that transcends the gap between the business and the personal sides of life, most people find it helpful to set up separate accounts for personal and business social networks and keep them strictly separate. Establish your business presence using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and any other social media platforms you find helpful, then plan to update them on a regular basis. Focus on only your business-related social media updates during business hours, keeping your personal social media presence for after hours. With this separation firmly in place, decisions regarding specific business social media updates are clearer, making your actual communications clearer as well.

Set Aside Time Daily for Social Media Updates

Set aside a small block of time every day to attend to your social media updates. During this time, attend to your Twitter business account with updates reflecting your accomplishments or thoughts on news of the day. Read through your Twitter business account's feed and judiciously retweet posts that allow you to contact people with whom you want to network. Update your calendar during this time, adding in any events that show up on your social media accounts and sending RSVPs in a timely manner. This is also a good time to update your photos or resume on sites like LinkedIn so that potential employers who might be attracted to your social media presence can see your most up-to-date information.

Use Social Media Management Tools to Manage Your Time

Many tools are available to help you update your social media accounts easily across a variety of platforms. Most of these tools are inexpensive, and they all allow you to schedule social media posts in advance, which is a crucial feature for good time management. Hoot Suite allows you to post updates to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn simultaneously, while Sendible also lets you separate out the various platforms in case you do not want to post the same item to all of them. Vertical Response allows you to manage your business email at the same time as your social media. For those in the travel or hospitality industries, Postling lets you manage your social media updates and pushes notifications regarding your business from Yelp and TripAdvisor so you can respond in near-real time.

Some people fear social media in a business setting because they have seen how easily it sucks away time in a personal setting. Avoid this by scheduling just a few minutes each day to update your social media accounts, and let your world know how current you are.

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