How on earth do you cope with a crisis like horse meat on top of an already busy working week and stay on top of social media to boot?
by Jamie Baker
Busy, busy, busy..... everyone, everywhere these days are extra busy. Work, family, and life in general needs so much...well...time! And following the dawn of the digital age there is even less time these days to be across absolutely everything that's out there.
As the recent horse meat investigation pointed out to many of us though, the place of social and digital communication in everyone's lives can't be ignored anymore. It's not going to go away and it's only going to grow, evolve and become more important to peoples personal and working lives. People aren't just looking to TV or Radio for news anymore - social has become the defacto, go to global news channel, but they also want reassurance from the social channels they engage with.
Whether it's using digital media to exploit the benefits, or being aware of social media practices and monitoring it to mitigate against the pitfalls, there is no doubt that all this extra digital stuff takes resource and time.
So what can we do? Well, Michael Brenner has just written a great article for Forbes on how he gets by, and how everyone can help themselves to find that ever elusive time for using (or being aware) of digital media.
Being brutal - it really does only come down to one thing - priorities. Actually being disciplined to make the time for social media. The old adage of only getting out what you put in has never been truer. Except these days it's even easier to see it in black and white (or Technicolor) evidence from the myriad of measurement tools that are out there.
That doesn't mean it has to be as daunting as finding the broken link in the hadron collider / the dodgy bulb in the Christmas lights (more my style) though. It means just being a bit more organised with what we do day to day. Even spending just a little bit of time each day will pay those engagement dividends, and help build meaningful and real relationships over time.
According to Michael the top tips to remember for helping to make time to blog, tweet, or post are these three simple gems:
- Make a small but daily time commitment. You have to find the time to make small “investments” in social every day. Tweet once a day. Blog once a week. Do whatever works for you and be realistic. It’s amazing what you'll find happens over a year.
- Build your content and your audience based on your passion. Write about and share what interests you and you will attract an audience of like-minded people. They will inspire you with questions and theories and unique points of view that will spawn completely new thoughts of your own. This in turn becomes the 'idea factory' you need to consistently generate lots of great share-worthy content.
- Help others. The bottom line is that “karma” works in the social world. Share the work of people you admire and they are just as good with their social media practice, they will reciprocate over time.
Couple the above with some good content curation and 'management' type tools such as Feedly, or Flipboard (great for tablets), Hootsuite or Buffer (if you really must automate), a good note taking app such as Evernote to jot down ideas when the mood takes you (and which syncs with nearly all devices), and a web content saving tool such as Instapaper (great for reading articles on and offline - making the most of dead tube journeys or bus stop waiting time), and you'll be pretty much set up to take on all those 'gurus' and 'experts' that never...ever... seem to sleep.
Jamie Baker is Social Media Manager at the Foods Standards Agency and part-time Mockstar
