It seems easy to let your online time take over your entire life, be it business or personal online time. There is so much we can do now online, from keeping up with our friends to watching television to marketing our businesses, and it seems like the list of things to do in order to accomplish these online tasks is endless. And it can be. However, as Kim Albee of Genoo told Webpro News, it can be “broken into bite sized chunks” and made more manageable.
So just what are small and medium sized businesses managing these days? Social media, websites, search engine rankings, and lead capturing are four of their top issues. In larger companies, there can be several people or a whole team to manage these projects, but smaller companies often have one person doing it all or several people adding portions of these activities onto their already full workload. While accomplishing these tasks is important to the overall health of the company, managing them well is also key.
Depending on which online tools and features your company uses, your efforts can be focused to produce excellent results in a minimum time frame. Let’s think about social media sites: it’s easy to get swept away in all of the possibilities of your social media. On Facebook alone, you can have online chats with your friends, play games, schedule activities, become a fan of different groups and businesses, post your own updates, and read the updates of all of your friends. A person could potentially spend an entire day navigating Facebook.
In Chris Crum’s article “Look for Ways to Manage Your Social Media Time Better” he lists a few great ways to cut down on the noise crowding out your online time, including
– Use the list features for Facebook and Twitter to organize the feeds you are getting and view from a single group of people at a time, rather than wading through all of the feeds from everyone on your list.
– Use browser plug-ins to make your online tasks smoother. This may take up a bit of time to research and implement in the beginning, but that time and more will be recovered in the long run by using the right tools for your browsing habits.
– Organize your news feeds too.
– Use down time, like when “waiting for your food to arrive at a restaurant, waiting at the dentist’s office” to check on your social media through your mobile devices.
However you manage your online time, be sure to do it mindfully to ensure that the internet is working for you, rather than allowing yourself to get swallowed by internet activities. For small and medium sized businesses, where managing tasks is even more crucial, these recommendations can be the line between success and failure.