Do You Have Social Media Overload?

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace…. Oh no, stop the madness! Are you starting to feel overloaded or overwhelmed by all the social media websites? Have you been trying to participate on all of the social media websites to enhance or grow your online presence? Then you are not alone because many business owners want to find ways to incorporate social media into the plan of their online presence.

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Being able to incorporate social media into a business’ online presence plan is important yet it can be time consuming and overwhelming. To help business owners get pass the overwhelming effect of social media, I’ve shared a starter list below:

• If you can afford it, hire a Virtual Assistant (VA) who specifically specialized in managing social media.
• To manage it yourself, you can use Web 2.0 tools that allow you to post to and monitor multiple social media websites all at once like HelloTXT (online software) or Digsby (Windows desktop software) or Adium (MAC desktop software).
• Create stock messages about your business or upcoming events so that you can have them on-hand to share online.
• Ask your followers to re-share your messages so that it can reach many more people.
• Setup a schedule of when you will manage your social media that may be anywhere from 15 -45 minutes per day. Start out small like 15 minutes per day until you can build up to more time.
• Spread throughout day. Keep in mind that you don’t have to do it all at one time. You can break up your time throughout the day so that you can spread-out your social media efforts. This way you could have a likelihood of sharing with a variety of people throughout the day.

Remember this is a starter list of ways you can get past the feeling of becoming overwhelmed by incorporating social media into your business. I would love to hear how you manage your social media efforts. Please feel free to share.