Social media overload: How do you deal with managing Twitter and Facebook without losing your mind

As long as you use social media for the sake of social media - yes, it is easy to get into total overload.

Consider this:
Move from network focus to people focus
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Instead of jumping from one network to the next and hope to catch something, jump from one person to the next and see how you can communicate. Then you begin thinking people not networks and that helps you determine much better: How much time do I want to invest in my customers.

Then there is a remaining time where you do only two things: Explore and share. And that is now much easier to quantify too. You may say I do that whenever I just have a bit of time. It is 2:10 at night right now and I just "explore" and "share" by answering some questions.

Everyone before me has made some great points ranging from using tools to time and task management, so I would like to offer up a slightly different angle.

1. If you are in an industry such as B2B high tech, biotech, etc that requires highly specialized skills or knowledge, then having your social media managers (SMMs) and subject matter experts (SMEs) engaging together will become very important. Not only will this help create and maintain meaningful 2-way conversations but it will also help share the workload. For starters, identify and activate your SMEs. Then, you may want to create an editorial calendar for various activities and assign SMEs to certain activities on certain dates/weeks to help share the workload with you, the social media manager. (Secure their buy-in first.)

2. Make it part of your day. Block time out on your calendar and treat it as a meeting. (I personally use this method too.) Use that for social media. The more you do it, the more you will learn how to separate the noise from real content that's applicable to you.

3. Activate your customers/fans/followers to become your advocates. Encourage peer-to-peer interactions on your social properties. It speaks volumes when someone other than a person from your company helps evangelize your brand, answers questions or offers relevant advice on your social destinations. Not only is this good for your brand but it also helps you scale.

These are just a few additional thoughts on top of all the great suggestions others have shared. In case it helps, here is a blog I wrote a few months ago that highlights the importance of collaboration between SMEs and SMMs: http://petra1400.blogspot.com/2010/10/quick-tips-to-plan-your-social-media.html

Using social media needs constant research and education, discipline and self-control, and knowledge of site audiences. As well, each social media site requires its own social etiquette when posting information. That, coupled with the need for businesses to be consistent in their posts and yet adaptable, can create quite a challenge.

Another option, instead of managing social media yourself or hiring a person in his/her 20's, would be to outsource your social media needs. Surgite Group Inc. offers Social Media Services that can be tailored specifically to your business. We handle the daunting task of manipulating the social media so that you can concentrate on other areas of your business. You benefit indirectly from our CIO Level Services, IS Support Services, Network Design/Support Services, and Server/Desktop Management Services because all are linked in our "Big Picture" corporate philosophy.

Social media is here to stay. The question is not, "Do we use social media?", but "How do we use social media?" Surgite Group Inc. knows how and, hopefully in the process, we can keep you from losing your mind. Here is a link to our Social Media Services on our website should you choose to investigate:

http://www.surgitegroup.com/surgiteServicesSocial.php

We wish you luck in whatever you choose to do. Remember, you are not alone in your struggle.

I agree with Veronique. I use Tweetdeck and have columns for each of the conversation communities I participate in, for example, #custserv and #customerexperience.

Everyone struggles with this question, because no matter how much or how little we spend online it's very easy to feel overwhelmed. The right tools (I prefer Hootsuite), using lists, and staying organized will help quite a lot. Too many of us let our social media engagement become chaotic and that makes things overwhelming and ineffective.

Take a look at these Daily Social Media Workouts(TM) http://ldig.it/bOeXsD

They were designed to make social media management simple and purposeful.

It is extremely manageable in less than an hour a day when you have hard goals, real strategy, and monitor and measure your progress. I've fallen prey to it being lost time and I've redesigned my strategy and interaction. I have always kept it manageable and never forgotten the point is not how many but how HOT.

It is also about how many you move from just virtual into reality of voice to voice and face to face that is more often where business happens, not just by virtual connections. They are valuable as a lead generator but real relationships take time and reality to bring to fruition, don't be fooled by numbers or the admiration of others (Having made Forbes Top 20 Women of Influence was an honor and I turned off Twitter New Year's Eve, favoring a fresh start and new approach.)

Like any task in a work context, it;s just a case of planning your time and accepting that you can't be everywhere, all of the time.

By having alerts set up in appropriate places and a workflow within any teams handling social media in a business context - which, of course, echoes the need for tools above - I find it's relatively easy to relax and get on with life.

And I'd reiterate the comments above about not feeding things cross platform. There's nothing more guaranteed to get people to drop your posts from their respective streams.

Great ideas and solutions! From a organizational point of view- I would create a calendar for 3 months and allot time for each tool. Before posting, you might consider making a few goals for each tool. Then you will feel as if you are accomplishing something. I like goals that measure and give a sense of accomplishment: getting a certain number of followers or fans, retweeting 5 times a month and then you will be retweeted, or creating one lead generation opportunity.
Good luck!

I work in the social media industry yet find myself able to manage my social media time because of the following reasons:

1) I have a clear objective for using social media.
2) I understand what the ROI of using social media is for me.
3) I create boundaries and have a daily routine which dictates how long I spend doing what in social media.

Social media can be a timesuck for professionals and businesses. Similar to the advent of email, we need to form new habits to efficiently manage our time.

I think it comes down to all of the above many of you have written. Its time management and allocation of task prioritization.

I use things like this http://www.google.com/profiles/VickensM

I also figure out way to be able to send out different messages on different platform that go thru others in a targeted way.

One realization to come to is which social media platforms are you going to prioritize? It's difficult to use more than two or three no matter how organized you are.

I try to limit myself each day and I use focused time. For example I'll devote 30 minutes to LinkedIn and usually less time to Facebook. I sprinkle Twitter throughout the day.

There are times in the day when I conciously decide to stay away from all social media in order to focus on tasks that are necessary to get "real work" done. You know what I mean. The work that meets deadlines and keeps the lights on.

That said, time efficient use of social media helps open new doors to keep the pipeline full of new opportunities.

It all boils down to time management. There are great free resources that you can use like HootSuite to help you manage multiple social media efforts seamlessly through one platform but you still have to come up with the content to put on those various platforms. Definitely saves you some time from logging in on various websites but I know from personal experience managing social media efforts for a business, that content creation was always the most time consuming aspect of it.

On a great note, there are now social media, reputation management and web presence services that are available that will help you with all of your social media efforts plus SEO, web presence and reputation monitoring all at the same time. And someone else, a qualified someone else who is great at creating customer engagement, will create all the content for you. You'll also be able to create content and manage your social media engagements and posts from one convenient location. I started using this and am blown away by how easy it has made my life.

http://www.teambishop.net/showcase/reachlocal-orlando-products-%26-services/r...

http://www.teambishop.net/showcase/reachlocal-orlando-products-%26-services/r...

The best way to run social media if you and/or you team do not understand it: Hire a college intern to do it for you. In this economy internships and job placements are tougher than ever to get in the competitive job market. They will do it free of charge and you will have to but them food and pay for their gas but they will happily do it in exchange for the experience and resume boost.

Putting together a comprehensive social media strategy as an extension of your brand and business is essential. If you do not know what you are doing on social media you are wasting your time being on it.

Not sure you need social media? This video would suggest otherwise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypmfs3z8esI

Here is a list of 50 social media sites worth knowing about if you are in business and hope to still be in business in 10 years.

http://www.insidecrm.com/features/50-social-sites-012808/

1 in 25 businesses survive 10 years or more - what are you doing to stay ahead of the competition - social media is the answer!

Contact me at joe@todaysgrowthconsultant.com if you'd like to discuss this more I'm happy to

I think it's all about having a solid strategy alongside realistic goals and expectations.

Tweeting throughout the day at peak times and building lists of influencers to engage with is key. I use Hootsuite to manage my followers and build lists in categories relevant to my brand and focus on different ones throughout the week.

I also follow a Twitter mantra of sorts along the lines of: start the day with inspirational tweeting (and by inspirational I am not referring to religion), switching to informational content in the afternoon, then a bit of fun and entertainment in the evening. This is where I have seen some very good responses lately.

If you do go down the road of automation, then be prepared to follow your automated responses with an actual response. Remember that with more automation, comes less personalization.

As for Facebook, that's a whole different monster which depends on your audience. B2C seems much easier to engage than B2B, but it's all about how creative you can be. I remember reading from the social media scientist Dan Zarrella, that posting good content every other day shows the best response.

Just my quick thoughts, great conversation thread.

All the best,

Jason Miller

I don't know your specific challenges or the type of business you are, but it's an interesting question and implies that you are faced with the challenge of how to stay on top of Twitter and Facebook, whether that is from a resourcing perspective or what to do with all the information that is being produced from these channels, or something else entirely. Unfortunately, we are often driven by the paranoia of what we believe we will miss out on by not being there 24/7. The reality is often far different.

Whether you outsource or manage the social channels yourself, whether you use Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Seesmic, CoTweet, Brizzly or whatever technology, is in my mind a secondary issue. Your technology simply reflects your approach, it does not determine or define it. The technology enables you to manage your time and the information more effectively, but if you aren't sure what it is you want to achieve from engaging in social with your customers, the tools wont suddenly provide the answer for you. You'll be just as overloaded, but in a slightly more effective and organised way.

For me, the challenge is really understanding what it is you want to achieve on these channels. Focus on this first, and then the solution second. All too often, we jump to the solution, without trying to understand what is the underlying cause of problem.