Social networking and social media platforms have a lot of good points, but they can also lead people to waste a lot of time, with productivity suffering as a result. If you use Facebook or other social networking sites yourself, you probably know how easy it is to log on intending to check your page quickly and realize hours later that you’ve wasted half of your day. In order to reduce the time sucking effect of Facebook, you may want to consider automating some of the routine things which come along with maintaining a Facebook page, for example:
* Linking to new posts on your (or someone else’s) blog: The Networked blog tool makes it easy to keep your page updated with new posts and other content. It’s a set it and forget it kind of tool which can save you a lot of time.
* Sharing your wall: people who visit your page can add it as a “like” and share your content on their own walls – and you can share your wall with readers easily with the Facebook Members plugin.
* Sharing plugins on your blog or website: You can make it easy for visitors to your blog to share your posts and other content via Facebook with plugins for WordPress and other blogs. You can add links for visitors to share your content on Facebook and a variety of other social networking and social media platforms.
* Adding links to your wall: A simple WordPress plugin allows you to automatically add links to your blog posts or other updated website content to your Facebook wall. However, you’ll need to check to make sure that your blog’s theme includes support for featured images or the plugin may not work as planned.
* Simple Facebook Connect: This plugin allows you to post to a Facebook page or profile wall, complete with automatic login capabilities. This plugin takes a little work to install and set up since you’ll need to get an API key to use it, but it is compatible with many WordPress themes and is well worth the effort.
If you use Facebook to communicate with people along with a blog, these are all plugins which you’ll find very useful – especially if your blog is part of your business. These plugins help keep your Facebook friends and likes in the loop about new content and let your current and potential customers share content which in turn helps spread the word about your business on Facebook.
Once you’ve put plugins in place to help automate some of the work of maintaining your Facebook profile, it’s easy to set rules about how and when you use Facebook. Try setting quotas for work which must be completed before you log in and setting a timer for your Facebook use; once the timer goes off, you need to log off and get back to work. Before long, it will become a habit and you’ll be able to get far more done during your workday.
You might also want to turn off your Facebook notifications when you’re not actively using it – and simply log off the site to eliminate the temptation to check it constantly. Once you get used to using Facebook in a more sensible way, it’s like having more time in the day – and as a business owner, that means more money in your pocket.
