The 'Work-Life-Social Media' balance – how do you fare?
Banana & berry smoothie
Do you struggle to maintain your blog, twitter, forum? Because it’s something I hear from my clients a lot. We’re all busy people and sometimes updating your blog falls to the bottom of your list.
It’s a challenge we all face, the work-life-socialmedia balance, and something I’ve struggled with in the last 3 months. And for a good reason, I’ve started a new job and a new job comes with lots of learning, excitement and new challenges. Having worked on some massive pieces of work and some amazing clients I’ll have some great stories to tell, when I get time…
To write a solid well refined blog post takes time and energy, even this one has taken more than the five minutes I had to drink my smoothie.
This is a quick post, because I really don’t have time, but how much time should we as professionals spend in social media?
I recommend to client atleast 1-2 hrs per week, maybe I should take my own advice a little more seriously?
How much time do you spend in social media each week?
Comments
Kate Kendall (Jun 16, 2009)
168 hours per week.
(If you know your maths, that’s THE week.)
;-P
Stephen Collins (Jun 17, 2009)
We all know I’m a bit like Kate – not sleeping and I’m probably online.
But for clients and others who as the “how do you manage the load” question, I say it’s not about working hard at social media (or anything), it’s about working smart. I’m not Tim Ferris yet, but I actually spend very little time *focussed* of social media tools. They are just there and they are just a part of what I touch intermittently during the day.
Learning to do that is probably hard. I don’t know as I just did it. I’m probably a better multitasker than I thought I was.
I actually try to teach people to achieve that balance by smart use – automated alerts to draw attention in, tools like multi-account, multi-view Twitter clients, automated feeds of data from one source to another.
That stuff makes a difference and makes your activity level seem very high.
It also depends on what your usage model is – are you participating for personal reasons, monitoring brand sentiment, working as a community manager? Each one will be different in the focus they need to bring and the level of on-and-off.
michele smorgon (Jun 17, 2009)
For Clients, it’s about business, for us like minded social media addicts, it’s part of our lives … perhaps not considered working …
How much time – I hesitate to count – similar to Kate,
Cheers,
Michele Smorgon
@maxOz (can’t help myself)