New apps and services are popping up every day which help you interact with both Twitter and Facebook. The majority of these apps and services are designed to help you be more productive with the time you spend using either social media service. But before I talk about which apps and services I find to be better than others, I have to talk about how you should approach social networking so it doesn’t consume all your valuable time, and how to make what time you decide to devote to it more effective.
Time Management
You will need to devote some time on a daily basis towards social networking in order to have it work for you. But how much time is needed? Obviously, the more time you spend on it, the more opportunities you’ll have to connect with people in your network and to make new connections. But doing this will take you away from other things- such as building your business, for example.
This is why it is imperative to determine how much time you are capable of devoting to social networking on a daily basis and stick to it! We all have been guilty of spending hours on, say, Twitter when we only meant to check for any direct messages or tweets from the people we are following. By setting a time limit, you go in with the mindset that you have X number of minutes to do what you have to do then you stop.
To figure out how much time is adequate, I would suggest breaking down your social networking activities into two different time periods: once in the morning and once in the afternoon. The morning period will be your shortest time period because you will mainly just be checking for any messages or tweets which came your way overnight. You can also use this time to respond to anything which requires your attention. For this time period, you can limit it to roughly 15 minutes tops. For your afternoon period, you will need more time because this is when you will be doing the bulk of your social networking activity. Most Twitter-related apps will let you create tweets which can be sent out at a specified time and date. This is a handy feature because you can create a handful of tweets at this time (including retweets and direct messages) and have them go out at different intervals throughout the rest of the day. I find I only need no more than 30 minutes for this time period. With my schedule, I find a half hour to be more than enough time. You can adjust your time according to what works best for you. Just remember to set a time limit!
Applications To Consider
Here is a quick rundown of the apps I use on a daily basis to make my social networking time shorter but effective.
Digsby (www.digsby.com) : Digsby is a downloadable desktop application which you can use for IMs, checking email accounts, and to also receive social networking alerts from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace. How I use it is I’ll open it three times a day (morning, lunchtime, and evening) to see what new emails have arrived (it’ll display the subject line and sender) and to see if I have any new messages left for me on my Facebook account. You can’t use Digsby to send and new emails or replies but it is a great way to do a quick check on your email and social networking accounts
HootSuite (www.hootsuite.com): HootSuite is a free robust and very handy service which I find myself using more and more. HootSuite offers a lot of features found in the more popular Twitter desktop apps such as Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck. But what sets it apart from those two is its accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, it doesn’t hog system resources, it has an iPhone app, and it the user interface is easy to use and navigate.
Ping (www.ping.com): Ping is an online service which you can use to send a message to multiple social networking accounts at one time. So instead of posting about a new post on Twitter, then switching over to Facebook to do the same, and such, you can just go to your Ping account, enter your message, and it’ll be sent simultaneously to the social networking accounts you have linked to your Ping account.
There you have it. These suggestions and tools should help you shave off some of the time you spend on social networking. I know they have saved me a lot of time! So what tools do you use to make the most of your time social networking? How much time do you spend doing it? Let me and everyone else know in the Comment section below. Thanks!
