Social media IS a waste a time if you don’t know the proper benchmarks, tools, strategies and evaluation practices to utilize. Otherwise you might be spending a lot of your valuable time inefficiently interacting with social media. How can you make better use of your time?
Benchmarks for your individual growth or organizational growth.
For example, I hope to increase web traffic to this site by 200% by the end of the year. With that, I hope to decrease the bounce rate to around 55%. I plan to establish myself with hundreds of followers on Twitter to continue to grow my follower base. Lastly, I plan to have a strategy with my tactics on Facebook.
What tools are available to help optimized your experience in furthering your identity online?
Currently, I use Tweetdeck to manage my tweets, new followers, and various custom searches. I prefer to use Bit.ly as a URL shortener because it lacks a toolbar at the top when you click through. I’ve used Hootsuite for a while but am quickly getting fed up with the toolbar they place at the top of all linked pages.
Have you developed strategies to guide the use of the tools you select?
I know that the mornings are my time to write. I try to capitalize on this and get my thoughts and ideas out early so I have content to push through Twitter and Facebook. I also know that my days get busy during the afternoons and I make sure to use tweet later services to fill in the gaps during the later day.
How will you evaluate the benchmarks you’ve put in place?
I make note of my current analytics and track the improvements throughout each month. The service I find superior to any other analytics platform is Google Analytics. With this I can tell geographically where my traffic is coming from, what web browsers are most popular, what screen size they are using, and hundreds of other very specific statistics.
Most people I know spend double or triple the time utilizing traditional social media channels because they aren’t aware of the free platforms available. After developing a strategy and deciding on a set of tools and processes to guide your experience with social media, I can guarantee that your time will be used more effectively.
