Social Media Work Flow

Ever wonder how much time you should devote to social media each week? While there is no set formula, this infographic breaks down the  components of maintaining and measuring a social media strategy, based on a 40 hour work week. Maintaining a social media strategy is not only about scheduling tweets and replying to mentions. Rather, social media  marketing is a living process in which each component is connected to the others. From content creation, to post scheduling, to campaign development, to analytics reporting, social media is an ongoing process.

ver wonder how much time you should devote to social media each week? While there is no set formula, this infographic breaks down the  components of maintaining and measuring a social media strategy, based on a 40 hour work week. Maintaining a social media strategy is not only about scheduling tweets and replying to mentions. Rather, social media  marketing is a living process in which each component is connected to the others. From content creation, to post scheduling, to campaign development, to analytics reporting, social media is an ongoing process.

The social media work flow infographic below assigns time benchmarks for eleven components of a strong social media strategy:

1. Updating social networks – 4 hours
2. Planning, writing, and publishing blog posts – 7.5 hours
3. Research and planning internal and external content to share – 4 hours
4. Curate and share content – 2.5 hours
5. Engaging with your community – 4 hours
6. Monitoring brand mentions online – 2.5 hours
7. Developing campaigns, such as promotions and contests – 2.5 hours
8. Community growth – 2.5 hours
9. Strategy management and adjustments – 2.5 hours
10. Analytics Reporting – 2.5 hours
11. Contingency time for damage control or unexpected problems – 4 hours

Do you allocate your time in a similar manner? Do you think that one component should have a larger focus during the week?

Well we might not have time to do all these but here is a few simple tips to improve our social media and blogging performance! 

1. Start with Your Tasks Right in the Morning

Taking action first thing in the morning is one of my golden rules. As they say the morning is wiser than the evening. You can make a lot of progress very fast if you begin with your daily tasks right off the bed. I mean think about it – there isn’t really that much to do in the mornings or at least when you don’t have to go to work – there is the coffee and there is the breakfast, but what else?

So my advice is simple. Try to get out of the bed as early as you can.

Setting up an alarm to wake you up at say 9AM is a great  way to “expand” your weekends. Days feel (and are) a lot longer when you don’t stay in your bed until lunch for no real reason. So once you get up and once you take that cup of coffee or finish the breakfast, jump into your marketing stuff straight away.

2. Divide Your Tasks into Small Bits and Pieces

Often times the sheer volume of a task that you have to complete is a good enough reason for you to do something else instead. But you can’t do that endlessly plus the bigger, more time-consuming tasks are generally the more important ones as well…

But there’s a solution!

Motivation and inspiration come easily when there is a sense of achievement. So in your to-do list (did I mention that having one is an absolute must?) instead of writing down “finish the X article by tomorrow”, you can divide that into “come up with a suitable title”, “finish the introduction part”, “find a good image to go along with the post” and so on.

3. Use Sticky Notes to Improve Productivity

Well they don’t do much. They are simply notes that you attach to your desktop, so that they are always visible without you having to open any program. In those notes you can add whatever you want that you believe can improve your productivity – from your today’s to-do list, through the blog post ideas that you come up with and to your checklist for when you publish a new article.

4. Sometimes Procrastination Isn’t Bad

Yes, you heard me right. You’ve certainly had one of those times when you simply didn’t feel like writing. And in those kinds of situations, I believe that writing even though you aren’t really inspired, is a mistake. That’s the only time when procrastination might just prove to be the better option. 

Whenever I happened to force myself into writing, I ended up with articles that weren’t quite exceeding the expectations. Following that practice I have published more than a few posts that the readers didn’t really enjoy.

So to make it short and simple – if it just isn’t your day, leave writing for tomorrow and do something else, but don’t make a habit out of it. Twice a month is okay, twice a week isn’t.

5. Get Off of Social Media for a Few Days

Are you struggling to supply your blog with fresh content?

As I have said before, I don’t really believe that content is king. The fact however is that your content is why people end up visiting your blog.

Yes, you certainly need social media to promote what you write and publish, but you have to prioritize – if you haven’t published new articles lately, it’d be a wiser decision to start writing than to keep promoting your older posts and chatting with other bloggers in your niche.

The above is namely why taking a break from social media is a great way to get back on track with blogging, come up with more article ideas and hence publish more frequently.

6. Have an Editorial Calendar in Place

The way that WordPress structures your articles isn’t ideal when you want to get an idea of how much content you’ve written and how much more you have left to write.

One really neat solution to the problem of having a rather lame post listings is the Editorial Calendar WordPress plugin. What that one does is it visualizes your blog posts in a calendar, showing when each of them will go live. With the help of the plugin you can also create a map of your posting schedule and include ideas for future posts.

The editorial calendar is by far the best way to organize my writing, so I definitely recommend you to give it a shot as well.

7. Check Your Traffic Only Once a Week

It is important to stay updated about how your blog is doing – how much traffic you get, what the bounce rate is and all other useful metrics. After all you need to make sure that the marketing strategies you are following are actually working.

But there’s the problem.

It often times happens that you expect one thing and when you check the analytics, it turns out the traffic flow is lower than what you anticipated. And as you certainly know that is often times followed by frustrating and negative thoughts – not quite the recipe for productivity.

So the simple solution to staying updated about whether or not your tactics are paying off is to just reduce the times you sneak a peek at your traffic numbers.

Once a week is more than enough if you aren’t testing something in specific. You will see that work will go smoother if you don’t have to over-analyze why you are seeing different results from what you wanted to.

8. Inspire Yourself with Other Blogs

That’s right. Sometimes inspiration doesn’t come straight away. And after all when it comes to blogging, producing blog post idea is generally harder than actually crafting the article, once you know what you are going to write about.

So one of the best ways to get an idea and spin the writing wheel is to head to some of the popular blogs in your niche.

I am definitely not talking about copying and pasting the first article you come across.Instead you simply open up the ten blogs that come to your mind, browse their homepages and even check the archives. Seeing the headlines is just enough – you don’t have to read the actual articles. Simply skimming through those and coming across something that you can relate to can spark that idea.

Best would be to create a folder on your browser’s bookmarks tab, where you add your favorite blogs (related to your niche) and get going!

9. Don’t Spend Your Day on the Computer

One thing I can say for sure is that being productive doesn’t mean sitting in front of your computer all day. Yes, you will certainly be able to write a ton of content and get all of your tasks done if you choose to do so, but that’s not what blogging and internet marketing are about.

What’s the point of improving your results when that requires you to spend countless hours?As much as you probably enjoy what you are doing, there’s a certain point when it just becomes boring. 

So even if you aren’t yet seeing the results you are hoping for, don’t force yourself to stay on the PC and work, work, work. Instead look for ways to get more done in a shorter period of time. That’s really the name of the game.

10. Midnight Isn’t the Most Productive Time

The chances are if you spend most of the night trying to finish your projects ahead of schedule, you will be sleepy the other day.

The problem is that work and sleepiness don’t go well together. Basically if you don’t get enough sleep, the next day you will probably be a ruin. You will have a headache, you will feel tired and all in all you won’t be in the perfect condition, ready to tackle today’s to-do list.

The sooner you call it a day, the better.

My workday ends not later than 4-5 PM. That leaves me with a lot of room to do whatever I want to plus I don’t have to think about what else there is to be done – a very stressful thought that you don’t at all need.

Check out the infographic: