Chaos is the very nature of social media. Between the endless jumble of posts, tweets, photos, updates and information, social media management can easily become overwhelming. A recent survey named Facebook the most stressful social media website. The immediacy of social media, the pressure to post daily content at optimal times and the struggle to find and post engaging quality content can cause any social media manager anxiety. So how does one keep a step ahead of the social media fray while staying current and developing deeper insights into your social media strategy? The answer is a combination of scheduling time to cultivate, manage and post. Here are 6 tips to keep your social media management ordered:

1. Create a Content Calendar:
Consider your social media content as a cross between a newspaper and a magazine. No publication prints or posts any article just for the sake of content, and neither should you. Have certain pieces of content that you post weekly or monthly. For instance, you can promote your most recent blog post every Monday, a cross promotion post on Thursday and a humorous engagement post every Friday. Your content will be different and consist of more than just these categories, but you can easily schedule your content weekly if not monthly for these time slots. Find a great article or link you want to share where you already have something ready to go? No problem, simply post that content in your optimal time and move your scheduled content to the next time slot.

2. Prioritize
Know what you have to do every day, what projects are long term and what can be broken down into bits. A social media manager should schedule in time every day to be “live” on each network, respond to comments and message and contribute to their communities, but each network demands different needs of research, writing, and maintenance.  Know which you have to do each day and which can be done on a weekly basis. At the beginning of the week, there might be a stronger push towards content creation, sourcing and writing whereas the end of the week might focus more on networking, development of long-term projects.

3. Schedule Your Time
Make a schedule for your social media management including how much time you spend researching and writing content, managing your community and developing new ideas and strategies. Write down your schedule in list form and stick to it. Use a time tracking tool like Toggl to keep yourself accountable to the time allotted to each task.

4. Avoid the Email Time Suck
Email can take up a large part of your day if you let it. Don’t let that email notification interrupt your grove, allot a few times a day to check and respond to emails. Good times to sort out the inbox are at the beginning of the day, mid-day (think right before lunch) and at the end of the work day.

5. Keep Lists
Lists are an essential part of organizing your daily, weekly and overall social media goals. You can keep the traditional written list or online lists through project management sites like Wedoist. This way, you can manage day to day tasks as well as jot down new ideas, tasks and long term projects. But lists also are an essential way to streamline your favorites. You can easily create lists on Twitter and interest lists on Facebook to keep track of what you find the most important. On Twitter, you might have lists that include brand advocates and influencers while on Facebook,  interest lists might include news and public figures that pertain to your community and  brand. Using these lists, you can curate choice content and continue building relationships with target members of your audience.

6. Have a Saving System
Seeing a constant stream of articles and news is tempting for us to want to read every article and see every webcast. Instead of spending precious time consuming content, have a system in place to re-visit articles. You can add links to a document or note, but I personally love using a system like Pocket, that catalogs saved content online and makes it easy to sift through later. Have a system in place to keep track of articles and information you want to be able to mull over when you have more time.

How do you keep on top of your social media? Tweet me your thoughts at @ErinSRichards.

Author: Erin Richards-Kunkel     Erin Richards-Kunkel on the Web Erin Richards-Kunkel on Facebook Erin Richards-Kunkel on Twitter Erin Richards-Kunkel on LinkedIn Erin Richards-Kunkel on Google Plus Erin Richards-Kunkel RSS Feed

Erin Richards-Kunkel is the Director of Social Media for RocketPost. She works with both established and emerging brands to develop dynamic and fully integrated social media presences that connect and engage with target audiences while telling the story behind the brand.

Richards-Kunkel has also worked as a digital manager for celebrity… View full profile

This article is an original contribution by Erin Richards-Kunkel.

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