3 Ways Busy Coaches Can Save Time With Social Media
Mar 28, 2022Your alarm rings. You roll over, grab your phone, turn off the alarm, and immediately start scrolling through Instagram. Then you move to Facebook. Then Twitter. Then your work chat and email. Next thing you know, you have to rush through your morning routine and head to the office.
Sound familiar? This is not a great way to start your day.
Today I want to share with you 3 different ideas that you can use to save time on social media.
- Save Time by Protecting Your Time
When I asked myself “how do you save time on social media?” one answer immediately popped into my head. You save time by conquering the need to respond and instead taking control of your time and energy. The dopamine surge you get from responding to social messages right away is real, and the red badge of doom haunts us all. But you can conquer the need to respond in real time, every time.
As a coach myself and a consultant who is teaching coaches how to save time with their social media, I know it can be hard to disconnect. When social media became a hot thing for coaches to use for their recruiting, I tried to respond to every message, every tweet, every time, on time. I watched every trend. I liked every meme. And at the end of the day, I was exhausted, demoralized, and unsure of whether I had actually made any progress with anything.
Over time, I’ve learned that disconnecting from social media is as important as following it. In my professional life, I check certain channels at certain times, and build in certain nights and weekends when I am truly offline.
2. Establish a Social Media Routine
Once you understand which times you don’t want to be online, you can optimize the time you do spend on social media. I’ve found it’s helpful to have a routine, where you check the same channels in the same way every time. That way, you can save time by slowly chipping away at inefficiencies in your routine.
Personally, I’ve found that while I am eating breakfast to be a great time to check up on social channels in the morning while my kids are eating and watching cartoons on Netflix (Garfield seems to be the most watched in our house right now).
As an example of a possible routine, here’s my morning social media protocol:
- Quickly scan push notifications, which I only receive from my calendar, work email, Slack, and Asana. Respond to anything I deem urgent.
- Check Twitter for any urgent mentions or DMs.
- Check Facebook for similarly urgent issues or emergencies.
- Quickly check LinkedIn for messages.
3. Get Lazy, Copy Others’ Tricks
Sometimes saving time on social media is as easy as finding tactics that work for your competitors and copying them. If you have someone in your professional or personal life who seems like they’re always tweeting or snapping, buy them coffee and ask them how they balance their real life with their social media posting. You can also build a list of accounts you love, to get a sense of the number of posts they send per day. Either way, find some heroes, borrow their tactics, and go forth to build your own social media empire.
P.S. If you have found this article helpful, please share it with your staff or other work colleagues! Studying time and energy management over these last 8 years and applying it to my coaching and recruiting has been a game changer for me. I am committed to helping coaches get more important work done in less time so more time can be spent with family and friends. Thanks!
