Social Media Time Suckers!

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When the clock hits 5PM do you feel like your day just disappeared? All those priorities on “the list” and only three out of seven were conquered? What happened?

If you're a user of social media, chances are the culprit is too many little distractions! 

And I'll make a point here; sometimes we DO need a little distraction to clear the mind, however, if this happens numerous times during your busy day, it could be time to rethink about the value (or lack of) you are getting from too many “times out”. 

Sadly, some of these time suckers are necessary because of the “quirkiness” of a particular social network (ahem; won't mention the name!).



Each time sucker takes up mere seconds to a couple of minutes; the clock keeps on ticking and it all adds up:

• The music video your friend just posted; it’s a great tune you haven't heard in ages! And the video is fantastic! 

• Reposting a post because no one sees it on Facebook! This is especially a drag for us small business owners. Example: The MODern Marketing 4 U page has 908 fans currently. Our latest blog was posted. It was seen by 35 people. That’s less than 4%! It will be posted again so that more fans see it. Thank goodness that Twitter and Google+ are not in the habit of holding posts hostage! 

• Digging out hidden comments. Facebook has some funny definitions for spam. Pulling out several a day can add in time spent. Here's an example of what they consider to be spam:

• Having to pare down tweets that are too long to retweet: All those shoutouts! Many are too long to RT so time is spent trying to whittle them down. I try to keep mine shoutout tweeps to a list of seven tweeps or less so that plenty of RT’ing can happen. Hint hint. 

• Causes and games on Facebook. I finally figured out how to eliminate causes entirely…whew! Was getting mighty tired of posts for causes slapped on my wall, including some with rather alarming photos. So each time I’d say “thanks for sharing” and then hide the post. Now, I’m always up for a good cause, however, this is not the way to reach me! And the game requests? I keep deleting them. Sigh.

• Direct Messages that are baffling. Unlike a lot of people, I really don’t mind getting direct messages. Sure, a lot of them are automated; if they are well written they can do your business some good. However, the example below has me scratching my head:

      

For real or the result of a hijacked account? If this gal thinks that this is clever marketing, she is very wrong. She’s costing me some down time before I hit block.

Oh yes, there are more! These little time suckers could be taking up a half hour to an hour of your busy day. Suggestion: Make a list of what yours are over a couple days then choose to eliminate some or perhaps reduce to them to every other day. Okay, if you have to continuously pull out posts on Facebook that were marked as spam; that’s a timely issue and you really can't let it go! However, when deciding how to handle it all don’t forget to embrace a few of the more lighthearted diversions!

Lesley Gore sang about lollipops back in the sixties; we did bring up the subject of suckers, didn't we? We don't hand out lollipops to our clients however we'd be happy to have you stop by our website, or stop by on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.