We all want to be more productive and know that where we’re spending our time is worthwhile. I’m asked this question a lot and I see it of others, so I wanted to discuss, in specifics, some of my most productive activities in social media, and some of the biggest time wasters I encounter (and avoid wherever I can).
First, it’s probably helpful for me to articulate my goals for social media participation. Mine might be different than yours, so you need to bear that in mind when reading this. I’m looking at these tasks and activities through this specific lens.
Here’s what I do all this for:
- It’s my job. I’m the Director of Community for Radian6. Connecting with people is what I do.
- I am building and strengthening my professional network of people, for both current opportunities and the notion that my network is the key to my future opportunities.
- I am forging my personal friendships and acquaintances outside geographic limitations.
- I’m hoping to establish a certain level of trust, expertise, and knowledge in my fields of social media and community for business. I do that both by contributing my experience, and absorbing, discussing, and sharing others’.
- I’d like my network to be powerful enough to benefit those within it, connecting them through me to each other.
Where my time is well spent:
- My Twitter presence. This touches nearly every goal above. I use Twitter for both personal and professional purposes, and blend my presence there to accommodate both. Twitter is as valuable to me as the phone or email. I do a lot of communicating on Twitter, but it’s dedicated to approachable conversation.
- Attending in-person events. Some of these are focused on business development for my company, or representing our presence as a sponsor. Sometimes, I’m there as a speaker to share knowledge. And still other times, it’s for personal pleasure to meet and visit with people that live far away from me. Most times, it’s a blend of all these things.
- Responding to email. Note how specific I am about this (and see below for the dark side to email). I make great connections by doing my best to respond to everyone who sends me an email, especially those reaching out for the first time. Being responsive and accessible is something at which I try very hard, and it affects my reputation and reliability across all channels.
- Commenting on blogs. I always wish I could do more of this. Commenting on posts gives me a chance to share my thoughts, lets others know where I stand and invites them into dialogue, introduces me to new faces and blogs (via their comments), and brings new visitors back to my blog or company website.
- Keeping up with LinkedIn. I know LinkedIn isn’t very sexy to many people (unless you’re my friend Lewis Howes, and if you want to use it even better than I do, listen to him, not me). But it’s a matrixed contact system that connects me to, among, and through thousands of people. I lurk on a lot of groups, see what’s being talked about. I even sometimes use the Q&A to see what people are asking about in my arena to inspire blog topics or discussions.
- Content creation and sharing. This is through my writing (both personally and professionally), a few selective communities I belong to (like the Community Roundtable) creating and distributing content for Radian6, speaking, and doing things like webinars. I’m a HUGE proponent of giving away anything that’s not nailed down and won’t get you sued or fired. The more I can share, the more discussion I have, the more I learn, and the more helpful I can be to others. It comes back around, every time.
- Reading books. I still learn a lot from books. The old fashioned kind. With pages and everything.
Biggest time wasters:
- Sifting through email. I recently deleted over 30,000 archived messages and started fresh. I delete ruthlessly and keep only what I absolutely must. And now, I’m using Gmail to tag and archive things. My inbox has 10 messages in it. Listen to Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero.
- Phone calls. I know I’m going to get slapped for this one, but I hate the phone for conducting business. (I hate it much less for personal contact). I know some people will only work that way, and I accommodate when that’s the case. But phone calls are often inefficient and ramble off topic, especially the dreaded conference call. I much prefer collaborative information sharing like Google Docs instead, or burst communication like IM or email. If you must have a phone call, have an agenda, get through the points (with next steps clearly stated), and be done.
- Subscribing to a zillion blogs (and thinking you’ll keep up). I overhauled my Google Reader. I have a couple of dozen blogs in there now, and they’re my triage system for what’s happening in the world of business (and a few that I just enjoy so much personally that I’d never want to miss them). The rest I touch through other channels like Twitter or Facebook. My trusted network shares the good stuff, and I do the same. I see more that way and don’t lose hours skimming and sifting.
- Trying to be everywhere online. I know where my leverage is. For me, it’s blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook (in that order). You may have forums in the mix. Maybe you love Facebook most of all. It’s all about what works for you, but I really do think focus is critical or you’re not really getting deep or valuable anywhere. You’re just surface skimming.
- Beating dead horses. I love a good, intelligent (even heated) debate or discussion as much as anyone, and I never fail to learn from someone or two when I have one. But I draw the line at ramptant negativity without movement toward an alternative, bullying, or feeding trolls. I won’t indulge the drama or get embroiled in conversations that don’t lead anywhere. I’d rather go put my time into creating or improving something.
- Mainstream news. If I’m watching TV or listening to NPR its for entertainment only. I don’t get my news this way. I get news faster and more diversified online.
So before you lynch me, I do realize that not everything has to be about getting something done. I “waste” time doing all kinds of things for pleasure or fun or relaxation. But when it comes to social media and my business future, I really do have a purpose, and these are the things that help get me there. You’re going to have a different take, and I think that’s great. Maybe mine is helpful to you, or not. Let me know?
And please share what you find super productive and where you feel like you’re burning time. Perhaps we’ll all learn a thing or three from you.
Great post and really handy tips and links, thanks Amber!
My tip would be stick to “quality over quantity” wherever possible. So while I consume a great deal of news and information digitally now, I still pick up a copy of The Economist magazine every week because the standard of the reporting and analysis is second to none.
I’d also be interested to hear how you go about managing and building relationships…and how you determine who to build a relationship with. As Robert Scoble seems to have been discovering recently with twitter, it’s no easy task! Also something I see Chris Brogan’s been commenting on a great deal recently.
Tim, I can’t say I have set criteria for people “worthy” of building a relationship with. Relationships and conversations start for myriad reasons. It’s usually someone’s desire to connect over time that wins, not how “useful” they are. That’s not usually much of a basis for a relationship with long term value. I connect with as many people as I can as often as I can. The cream rises to the top.
Amber, this is a wonderful post… and I am more or less in the same position. This post reflects how difficult it is to be productive in the job we have to do and at the same time remaining a ‘social median’ human being. The post reminds me of my vision called ‘personal web manager’ ( http://bit.ly/vxykc ). I think, a lot of us would love to have such a person, helping us to stay up to date while not missing anything that might be important for our career, our online reputation and our business. Some weeks ago, I was talking at the Webinale in Berlin: Career 3.0 – the balancing act between productivity and personal branding. Seems we can share the same thoughts, right?
Amber, fantastic post.
‘Trying to be everywhere online’ and ‘subscribing to a zillion blogs’ sounds all too familiar 😉
I’d really be interested in knowing a bit more about where your time goes, ie. proportion of time spent commenting on blogs vs. content sharing, etc. And perhaps which of the ‘time well spent’ categories are the most fulfilling (personally or professionally) for you?
Hi Jordan,
There’s some stuff here: http://altitudebranding.com/2009/07/the-ultimate-community-management-faq/
If I had to guess, I’d say I spend about 40% of my day responding to and engaging with people on Twitter and on blogs. I spent probably another 20-30% creating new and fresh content. Sharing of other people’s stuff is probably woven in between, and the rest is maintenance/admin kind of stuff.
As for fulfilling, that’s a great question. I love to write, so the content creation and blogging is probably the most satisfying on a deep personal level. But the in person events and connecting with people online is the most fulfilling overall, because it never fails to enrich me somehow.
I often wonder about how productive I’m being with my time, and your post covers all the questions I should be asking myself. Thanks for the post!
I do try to find time for “new spaces” online (remember Plurk adventure last summer?) but, agree, once you determine it’s a time suck and no benefit, it’s time to move on. Peace to you day, Amber!
Great post, Amber.
I agree with pretty much all of your points, and found myself nodding my head quite a bit while reading. I need to greatly improve my inbox management – so I feel your pain with time wasting in that category. Also on the same page with phone conversations.
I have always felt strongly that worrying is the biggest time waster of them all – both personally and professionally. While some worrying is healthy, most cases of worry lead to poor work/performance and further procrastination.
Thanks for the insight!
Amber, you make some great points here about quality over quantity and picking the right avenues to explore – do what works for you and try to minimize the noise in favor of relevant content.
Personally, I’ve been meaning to clean out my Google Reader for some time and you’ve just inspired me to trim the fat. I don’t need it if it’s not nurturing my growth and better to just do without if it’s not necessary.
I’m with you on pretty much everything you’ve mentioned in this post, but find it hard to get rid of email, especially within an environment that values documentation. I work for a non-profit organization (we use Outlook) and we keep more than we should, but don’t document what we really need nearly well enough. The organization and structure of my email box has been something I’ve been struggling with for a while and I have yet to come up with a system that truly works. I like folders, but I find that the volume hasn’t allowed me to sort as often as I’d like and, therefore, things don’t always get where they’re supposed to go.
When you say your “inbox” has 10 messages, where are the others you’ve tagged and archived or was that just a part of your starting fresh after deleting the bulk? I find Gmail’s “conversations” to be extremely helpful, so there’s essentially one entry for each conversation instead of a separate entry for each and every email – and, of course, their search function is a huge help. I find tags helpful, but would love to have folders. I’m aware there’s a way to do this, it’s just not nearly as intuitive as with other platforms (especially for someone who uses Outlook on a regular basis).
I was pleased to see that reading physical page-turn-required books is on your list. I think sometimes we forget to take time to really absorb information and process it before spitting it back out again. I find that reading books helps me immensely with critical thinking. I sincerely hope that neither of those things is becoming a lost art.
Hey there. When I say inbox, that means the inbox proper. Not the archives. But for reference I sifted through all of my archives and kept about two dozen emails out of thousands. The rest went bye-bye. If it’s that damn critical, I can get it again.
I made the transition from folders to tags pretty easily after I was open minded about it. I think it’s helping me AVOID saving a bunch of crap I don’t need.
Hi Amber,
I like the idea of figuring out how best to use your time on social networks and I also have reduced the amount of blogs I read every day and connect with the most relevant through Twitter. I still do use email since a lot of my business gets conducted that way. What I do notice is that more people are finding me through LI and Twitter, which is neat. I think the key to being effective with your time is to consider how best to connect with the other person, based on their preferences, so that’s why I still pick up the phone. It’s not a time waster if this is how they like to connect.
Thanks for your sharing…it’s making me think about just writing a list of what I should check everyday or several times a week on things social.
A great personal strategy. Regardless of one’s profession or role, personal branding is (not only the buzz) but required. This could also represent a good on-line personal branding strategy in general. Biggest challenge with your top two time wasters: Other parties are still entrenched in these communication channels. So, they need to be accommodated.
Two issues I would add in terms of how others use these channels in a manner that was never intended. First email – its not instant message. Please don’t send me a two word email. Or worse, “thank you”. I appreciate the polite jester. But with the volume of two word emails, its really not necessary. Also, I think corporate email should have an “unsubscribe” function for removing yourself from distribution lists. Once you get on one, you cant get off.
Phone (or more to the point, voice mail). The same people that send me two word emails, call me and leave 5 minute long voice mails. I didn’t think I still needed to give people specific instructions on my voice mail greeting – “please leave your name, number and a short message” – but apparently I do….not that anyone listens to it.
Amber Amber Amber. Similar to Gavin, I was also nodding my head as I read (hmm – that rhymes). A thought, a few questions (as always).
Thought: What about internal education? Do you spend “productive” time working with the Radian6 team on empowering, coaching, educating, etc? If so, what is the balance there? I find that in my first month or so on the job, I’m doing quite a bit of this.
Questions:
1. LinkedIn: I spend close to zero time here. I like what you mention about lurking, learning, and getting inspiration for posts. I sometimes join the conversation in various groups too, but…how often do you really use? Not much compared to twitter and blogs?
2. Books: What is your ratio between “industry” and “non-industry” reading?
3. Blogs/Google Reader: I haven’t used G-reader in months. I now rely on 2 things – Twitter and Feedburner. I subscribe to about a dozen blogs via Feedburner – ones that I read every single day. Twitter introduces me to those I miss…(Crap. Just realized that was not really a question. Oh well).
4. Be everywhere: This is the toughest one to balance as I think it can be changing. How often do you dabble in new venues to see if they provide value?
That’s all I’ve got. Thanks (again) for crushing it, Amber.
dj
—
DJ Waldow
Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory
@djwaldow
Inquisitive, aren’t we? 🙂 Okay…
1) I touch base with LinkedIn for maintenance (invitations, etc.) every couple of days. I dive deeper to do recommendations, look at Q&A and poke my head into groups once a week or so. Not nearly as much as the other channels as far as interactivity, but it’s still a valuable resource.
2) I read a lot of fiction. It’s my escape. I probably read 75% fiction and 25% business. Of that, it’s probably 75% social media/web/internet/marketing stuff.
3) I’m with you. And I change up my reader all the time to get fresh stuff.
4) Depends. Probably once every few months. If there’s a bunch of buzz about something, I’ll check it out. I let a lot of the little stuff go by, content to not always be an early adopter. 🙂
Oh. And as for internal education and communication, Lauren and I are working hard on that right now. I’m going to guess that we’ll be doing more and more of that as time goes on, just to connect all the dots.
We’re going to end up doing TONS as we get new processes and ideas off the ground. Then, as time goes on, they’ll be more in maintenance mode rather than learning mode. But I’m going to say that you’ll always spend a good 20% of your time making sure that your *internal* ducks are in a row, more at the inception of projects and initiatives.
A
Blogs I split into two meta types – essentials and nice reads. Both are in Google Reader, but categorized, so that I can peruse the nice reads on the iPod Touch or Blackberry casually. I also feed the nice reads into my Kindle using Calibre, so that I have reading material to take along with me when I’m standing in line or in transit.
Oh, and you forgot meetings. For those of us with in person offices, poorly run meetings are the biggest time killer of all.
Yeah, because I work remotely I suppose I’m lumping meetings in with conference calls. But you’re absolutely right. THey were the bane of my existence back in Corporate America. 🙂
To make meetings (phone, online, in-person) more efficient:
1. I always ask the person setting up the meeting to send everyone an agenda and ahead of time
2. Set a time limit fort the meeting and stick with it
3. Make sure that whoever is leading the meeting is responsible for bringing the conversations that go off track back.
“Trying to be everywhere online.” I dared to go off line and i was feeling guilty for a moment and happy all the time. Yes, i deserve to be off line!
Email and poor meetings are my big 2 time sucks! I also hate the phone =), but have to deal. Once tactic I use it to not respond to the phone and then email people back to let them know. It’s a training of sorts. Obviously I can’t always do this, but it has worked in places.
As far as social media goes i think a big time waster “can” be leaving everything open and/or having all the notifications running. I know there is a place for this stuff, but if you have everything open and alerting you all the time then getting real work done gets tough. Unless your job is monitoring things – in this case you’re all good.
Good post Amber. Thank you for sharing your personal way of attacking this challenge.
http://twitter.com/franswaa
Great post Amber,
As you stated, I think it’s important to have an agenda before getting started. Much easier to then analyze if you’re reaching your desired goals and getting the value out of time spent. I think we still see too many people wasting time, without a plan using the hope strategy. They’re hoping by spending time on social networking sites that positive things will happen.
I’m starting to get more involved in web chats when communicating with people I am close with and have had great brainstorming sessions that seem to be more effective compared to the telephone.
This list is money! Well done. I’ve discovered that you can’t avoid con calls, but if you set them up, you can start them at unusual times and have them for unusual increments. People talk to fill up the time.
For example, I had a call today from 10.33am to 10.57
Seems odd, but all three of the people I invited made a remark about it (aka remarkable) and were extremely conscientious about getting the issue resolved within the timeframe.
On LinkedIn, I’ve also committed to writing 1 recommendation (genuine) per week for a person in my network. It’s a great relationship builder and they usually reciprocate (which is why I have over 100 now) http://www.linkedin.com/in/jer979
Keep up the good work.
Simple but fascinating idea about setting unusual times for calls. I’ll give it a whirl today. Great idea and thanks for sharing Jeremy.
I’m so glad to hear someone else say they hate the phone. I’m the exact same way. I love talking to people, but I’d rather do it face to face rather then the phone any day.
Point on post as usual!
Getting News online is the fastest way ever, I was working as an editor at some media company and I was touching this!
Thanks for the great post!
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, Amber. I find that your descriptions of how you handle things are pretty much like reading a textbook. I love it that you think actual face to face time is important and I couldn’t agree more with your comment on blogs. They’re not dead at all and I think are a more powerful medium that a lot of people realize.
I’ve got to say that I struggle a bit with LinkedIn. I was a member of lots of groups and found that the vast majority of stuff I was seeing was people wanting something from me with very little to offer. We’re in different industries so I’m sure my experience is not the norm.
I think one of the keys to using the different media is understanding their strengths, weaknesses, size limitations (i.e. attention spans) and–perhaps most importantly–shelf life. Freshness of content is more important as the size limit decreases. I am amazed at how much better something is appreciated on Twitter or Facebook if it is “now”.
You add so much to the discussion by the example you set.
john
oh yeah, how does one get an image on their comment///
thx
john
Amber,
I’m always trying to better manage my time (24 hours a day is never enough!), and I’ve read, in the practices that you shared with us, very valuable and practical (you’re a woman 😉 ) advices that I’m going to experiment. Thanks for sharing and helping us manage Information Overload! 😉
Here are some of mine that you might find of interest :
– regarding my source of information (bloggers/microbloggers), I try to balance the origins of the people I’m following : between women and men, between American and European (and some ROW), between subjects of interest (society, business, management, functional…)
– periodically, as I keep adding following (on Twitter) and subscriptions (within Google Reader), I remove the following and subscriptions that have less value for me.
– I usually don’t follow/read a given person on Google Reader (I use it for in-depth information/analysis in my main domains of interest) as well as on Twitter (I use it for intelligence, thanks to social filtering, and/or for information in domains outside of my core interests).
– I use different asynchronous tools (with a hierarchy between them) : GMail/Twitter/GoogleReader/LinkedIn(professional) and FaceBook (personal)and synchronous (meetings and some phone/skype). I’m waiting for Google Wave in order to support efficient communication within projects/groups).
– I frequently use Instant Messaging(Skype or G-Mail or FaceBook) when needing an interactive discussion.
– When I’ve something to tell, I twit, and/or I comment. But I also keep some of my time (5 to 10%) for my blog.
– I also keep some time for reading books, but I also read 2 weekly newspaper with more in-depth : the Economist, and a French one.
– Finally, I (try to) keep some moments for friends and family.
Regards
Finding the perfect balance between work and social networks 🙂 would be more than i could ever dream. I am addicted to some of this networks and even when I’m at work I still check them regularly.
This fabulous post captures much of what I believe in and how I use social media and emails. It’s refreshing to hear people admit they don’t like using phones. I remind myself to think relationship building to ensure I offer something of value.
I also think about negativity — if something makes me react in a negative way — I don’t respond right away. I think about it. Simmer. Do the Mom, employer and client check to see if I’d want any of them to read what I write.
Yes, we must accept we can’t be everywhere online. Think that way and you’ll end up no where because of the overwhelm that comes with that thought. Just spent 10-15 mins a day on social networks posting valuable responses/comments and you’ll do fine. It doesn’t have to take hours out of your day unless you’re in a job that that’s related to community and social networking.
Hi Meryl,
You have the point. I couldn’t better have told your conclusion:
“Yes, we must accept we can’t be everywhere online. […] Just spent 10-15 mins a day on social networks posting valuable responses/comments and you’ll do fine.[…]”
You are perfectly right. It’s amatter of balance between quantity and quality, and we only need the quality to contribute and create value.
What I find interesting is that many of us would say our top time wasters are email, telephone calls, and meetings. Have you noticed a shift in preferred communications styles? Today’s culture prefers succinct “get to the point” and “have an agenda” type communication instead of get to know each other, build a relationship, person to person communication. How long will it be before even 140 characters will be too long?
Great post! Like you, I am in the community business, so I can relate to all your activities and how they help further your daily objectives.
Bob Stanke
http://bobstanke.com
http://twitter.com/robertstanke
Thank you Amber and @BeckyCortino for sending me here!
My experience in Africa is different than in USA. People in West and North Africa like to connect on the phone for 120-60 sec or less. So it is more productive for me to connect with someone on the phone or by SMS. They are very unlikely to connect with me on Twitter or Facebook.
Why hasn’t anyone talked about using SMS as a productive communication tool? I use it to broadcast holiday greeting to multiple people and as a quick thank you or birthday greeting to a contact.
Mike
https://twitter.com/farho
This article really resonated with me, and I am SO in agreement RE: ‘Time Wasters’ listed…
The key is “knowing where your leverage is” (as you say), which is a unique positioning, to be determined for most effective communications.
Thanks for your insight!
Becky Cortino
http://twitter.com/BeckyCortino
I was relieved to see you place such a high value on Twitter because I’ve recently started using that myself, and find it incredibly useful! I love keeping my clients updated on my project progress that way, and I feel it saves me time from writing emails, or getting stuck in messenger conversations.
I’ll have to go check out LinkedIn now that you’ve mentioned it!
There’s a movement to radically change California government, by getting rid of career politicians and chopping their salaries in half. A group known as Citizens for California Reform wants to make the California legislature a part time time job, just like it was until 1966.
If only everyone online read your blog. Many good points made. We all could stand to be focused and avoid being that “lynch mob” but then again somedays- I can be the pot and kettle.
Hello Amber, great post with many excellent points that will help newbies to social media. The amount of noise is incredible and the info overload is even worst. Leveraging your time with what truly works for you is really key.
Thanks for posting and being an inspiration for newbies like me!
RM – InBoundMarketingPR
I can absolutely relate to all of these (and often fall into these huge time wasters… black holes might be a better term for it because they suck you and all productivity right in). Great post. Maybe a few examples of how you use radian6 to avoid these time wasters?