Chris Brogan recently followed John Jantsch’s lead and defined his social media system/routine. I’m nowhere near these guys in terms of where I stand in the social media world, but I think it’s a good idea for all of us to step back and look at how we’re spending our time.
So here I go (and I’m also trying to put a time-spent/day label on each activity):
Tools:
- Firefox
- Tweetdeck
Workflow:
About 10 times a day
- Check Gmail (I know, this is my biggest vice!) respond as needed (50min/day)
4 times a day
- Scan Google Reader, read whatever catches my attention, try to comment on interesting stuff I read (60min/day)
- Start up Tweetdeck (when I have it on all the time I can easily get mesmerized), check stream, replies, DMs and searches (elenakostovska and other stuff that is of interest at the moment), share a link or two with the community (20min/day)
Twice Daily
- Check into Facebook, ignore most invitations for this and that quiz, decline virtual flowers, write on a wall or two, scan through friends’ new photos (10 min/day)
Daily
- Check into LinkedIn. Scan connections’ feed, maybe add a connection or two, scan questions and answer if I can contribute (10min/day)
- Check blog (comments/stats). Respond to comments if necessary (10min/day)
- Stare blankly into the screen as potential blog post topics swim in my head (10min/day)
- Do SOME work on a blog post -sometimes a sentence, sometimes 10 paragraphs (10min/day)
Now, Chris Brogan also broke down the time he spends into 60% correspondence, 20% discovery and 20% execution. This, of course, makes sense for him, because he eats, breathes and lives social media. But the execution part got me thinking…I’m not that active in the execution scene right now (still on the lookout for a new challenge in my career) but what I do consider execution in this (unusual) stage of my life is 1) the creation of compelling content (on my blog) — this is something that keeps me from going crazy and helps me learn and share, and 2) networking (finding and conversing) with people that could help me find this new challenge I’m looking for or even define it as I am still not sure what shape or form it will have once it appears. (On a side note, I sometimes view these two things as completely different — I may blog about Edmodo in education on the same day I am trying to connect to someone who can help me find my way into a Marketing position for a local, say, telecommunications company). So with that in mind, my time spent on activities above (which comes up to a total of about 3hrs/day) breaks down like this:
- Correspondence: 50%
- Discovery: 40%
- Execution 10%
Oh yes, the remaining 82% of my waking life which I spend on other stuff is a whole different system. Maybe some other time…
How about you? What does your social media system look like? Now that you’ve looked at your routine as a system, is there anything you want to change?
Photo Credit: Dazed81
