The first four installments of this series dealt with tools and tactics that will help you work more efficiently when dealing with one or more social media platforms. And if you’ve read this far, I can only assume you have a lot of yourself invested in your platforms. A word of caution: Although you’re spending a lot of time crafting your message and making sure it reaches a lot of (and the right) people, don’t become so caught up in it that you become Narcissus and fall in love with your own image. Because, at the end of the day, a social media page can’t — much less won’t — love you back.

 

Spend 10 minutes on any social media newsfeed, and you’ll easily pick up on the Top three things individuals and brands are doing to waste time:

 

1.Lack of Focus

 

The biggest mistake hunting industry companies make when entering the social media waters is to believe they have to be everywhere, all the time … right now. Developing a social media strategy that works for you takes time, effort and a good amount of planning. Lacking focus — i.e. why you’re here in the first place — can be the biggest time drain for you as individual; it’s way worse if you are also relying on staff members.

 

Lay out a clear plan as to what you want to accomplish by being on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Vine, Snapchat or any of the other social mediums.

 

2.No Real Schedule, Just Random Posts

 

It’s beyond easy to waste several hours each day surfing around trying something that’s going to engage your social media followers. Stop this time-wasting cycle. It’s costing you money, because it’s taking time and effort away from what’s more important: your business. Social media for businesses is not meant to put immediate dollars on the bottom line. However, you need to be smart about it at the same time.

 

See #1: What’s your goal? Figure that out, then it will be easy to schedule the posts (and more importantly: which platforms) that will help you achieve those goals and keep your focus for weeks, months and quarters at a time. Things can and will change, but a schedule, and a scheduling assistant (see earlier blog entry on how to schedule social posts) will put more time back in your day. And you’ll stop feeling like you’re always spinning your wheels.

 

3.Sinking into the Weeds

This might be No. 3 on this list, but it’s often the No. 1 problem I see with individuals and businesses on any social media platform. Let’s face it, Facebook and Twitter most notably are today’s version of what web-page forums were in the early 2000s. Just like the Web is full of trolls, so are your social media pages. Stop worrying that some guy bashed you on one of your Facebook posts. Stop wasting time responding to people who are just there to pick a fight. In fact, stop reading every single comment so thoroughly. Your brand’s page should be more about starting the conversation, stepping aside and letting people sound off, and engaging just enough to keep them coming back for more. In other words, get out of the weeds. It’s an enormous time-suck and doesn’t do you any good to be so uber-paranoid that you believe you have to respond to every naysayer or sayer for that matter.

 

Another tip: Turn off those auto-notifications. Although it’s nice to know that 245 people liked your latest post, you don’t need to feel obligated to reply instantly. If you’re lucky enough to have help with your social media pages, appoint one staff member per account, and give them implicit instructions to only check the notifications once a day. Have them reply to the important stuff, monitor the rest. It’s similar to email: Remember that “email” stands for “electronic mail,” not “urgent, oh my God I have to drop everything I’m doing and reply to this because someone sent it to me just now.”

 

Change the way you look at social media — as a tool that will help you expand your brand or business — and you will soon learn how to work more efficiently and effectively in much less time than what you might have previously thought was necessary.