30 Tips: The Productivity Guide of Social Media

by Andrew Ran Wong on January 20, 2010

The Productivity Guide of Social Media

The Productivity Guide of Social Media

I wanted to write a productivity blog post a long time ago, simply because there are, inevitably, a slew of people who participate in all the chatters and conversations in social media without getting anything accomplished.  Social media is probably one of the biggest time wasters in the modern 2.0 world.  Given all the Twitter, Facebook, and blogging tools, it’s easy to be overwhelmed and get lost in social media.  So what can we do to use social media more productively? This is a post that introduces you to 30 ultimate tips, the productivity guide of social media.


A. Gmail

1. If you have multiple email accounts, redirect all your emails to your Gmail inbox.  Simplicity is everything.

2. Use Gmail filter to keep your inbox relatively clean.  Reading more spam only means wasting more time.

3. Learn to batch process all your emails at once at specific times of the day.

4. Use the “Star” feature and mark the emails that you want to come back to read again.

5. Select different labels to categorize your emails, which makes finding them much easier at a later time.

B. Twitter

6. Decrease the quantity of your tweets while increasing the quality of your tweets.

7. Learn to scan through other people’s tweets in an instant and identify the links and messages that are specifically important to you.

8. Try to avoid reading DMs, because you can get a sizeable amount of spam when following too many people.

9. Design your own Twitter lists to help you get organized with the people you follow.

10. Add the URL shortner tools that allow you to shorten the URL of the articles you’re reading without leaving the page (Recommended: Shareaholic for Google Chrome – Download)

C. Facebook

11. Connect Facebook with your Twitter account so you can post directly on Facebook when you tweet.

12. Avoid setting up too many Facebook pages or groups, because it takes forever to manage them.

13. Don’t get into any Facebook games such as Farmville, which is highly addictive.

14. Try to not join too many Facebook groups or pages, because they tend to send out way too many messages that can easily take over your Facebook inbox.

15. Switch all your Facebook settings to private so you become less of a target for marketers and spammers.

D. Blogs

16. Batch process and manage your blog comments at once, including replying to them.

17. For full time bloggers, set up certain times daily to write blog posts. Stick to the schedule. The more often you do it, the more efficient you will be.

18. Write down the daily ideas you have about good blogging topics. This will save you lots of time in the future.

19. Try to skim through blog posts you are reading, and identify the important pointers that are meaningful to you.

20. Use social bookmarking sites to help you save important blog posts so you can revisit them at a later date.

E. Google

21. Install Chrome browser, which has an obviously faster speed compared to all other browsers.

22. Use Google Calendar to help you manage your daily tasks.

23. Begin to use Google Reader to bookmark your favorite blogs.

24. Install Google Voice to avoid picking up unwanted calls.

25. Read Google News to stay up-to-date with what’s happening.

F. Other Social Media Networks

26. Use Posterous to help you compose and post blog posts on multiple social networks via an email.

27. Get familiar with different Twitter apps that can dramatically increase your productivity.

28. Don’t try to dominate every single social network, because you can’t. Find out what works for you and stick to it.

29. Compose a daily to-do-list that gets you more organized with a variety of activities you want to engage with different social networks.

30. Hit the “Pause” button every now and then. And think of ways that can make your even more productive in using social media.

Conclusion

So that has been my secret on using social media more productively.  Hopefully, I can help you create an extra hour or two on a daily basis with these methods.  However, this list is, by no means, exhaustive.  Feel free to add your favorite productivity tips in the comment area below to share with the WebStudio13 community.

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  • There's some great advice there. And the best is saved to last: "Hit the “Pause” button every now and then."

    Not only is social media overwhelming at times but the apps and services that work to be productive on social media can be overwhelming as it takes time to learn how Twitter apps and, for example, Posterous, can work for you. But this post has inspired me to stick at it!
  • Hi Andrew,

    Thank you for this excellent post! I was actually introduced to this blog post from one of my readers on a LinkedIn Group Discussion on a similar topic that I wrote at the beginning of the year:

    http://windmillnetworking.com/2010/01/04/social-media-strategy-for-2010-how-to-avoid-social-media-distractions/

    I only posed a theoretical question that we need to start creating some boundaries because it is impossible to keep up with everything in social media. You have taken this approach into a more granular one with a lot of great tips for people. I am already doing most of what you recommend and I still don't have enough time of the day! But there were a few tips that you recommended that I was not aware of and will be sure to check out.

    Thanks for your contribution to try to make everyone's social media existence more efficient!

    @NealSchaffer
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