Is your work interrupting your social media time?

We are told that we cannot disregard the value of social media and those of us busy tweeting and linking have clearly got on board. But some days, it can seem like a full time job. In fact, many businesses now employ someone just to manage their social media activity. I find that I only need to be tied up with other matters for a couple of days, to feel completely out of the loop.

It is easy to lose sight of your original intention with social media and it is worth revisiting it now and then to assess whether social media is working for you or whether you are now working for social media. To get back to basics, ask yourself the following questions:

• Why am I in business?
• What is my business?
• Who do I want to connect with?
• For what purpose?

For example, I am in business to help people and to make a living. My business is legal services – I provide solutions to my clients’ legal problems. I want to connect with other professionals that I can cross-refer work with, clients that I can assist directly and people who can help me make my business better. I want to do this in order to expand and improve my business.

So now when I look at my activity on Twitter and LinkedIn and consider what I am saying, I can reassess whether my objective is likely to be realised. Some connections, whilst interesting, are not really conducive to meeting my aims and need to be “unfollowed” – they are really just a distraction. It’s important to be able to streamline your social media so that your SM time is quality time. Then you can legitimately schedule it every day and still get on with your “real” work. Failure to streamline results in social media overload which is not helpful to you, your clients or your business.