Lately, I’m on a mission to try and schedule everything except bathroom breaks and sex. This includes time I spend on social networking sites. It can seem overwhelming to stay active in the social media loop and maintain your presence on 5, 6, or even 10 or more of these communities. Sticking to time slots seems to be working out well for me so far with a simple, but strict, routine that helps save time and keep things flowing smoothly:

Socially Organized! Just because many social networking sites are based on chatting, sharing, networking, and meeting new people, it doesn’t mean they have to be time wasters. In fact, for a lot of online entrepreneurs, social media interaction is a crucial part of their success.
Here’s how I organized my social networking time, and integrated it into my daily work schedule.

1. I decided how long I was willing to spend on social sites per day and scheduled a time to participate, similar to how I would implement any other daily task. I chose to start my day with a coffee and a social session for an hour. I also have more flexible time set at the end of the work day, and then again before bed if I feel up to it.
   (Twitter and other messaging is often open throughout the day though. Stay disciplined!)
2. In Firefox, I created a folder named “Social” in the bookmarks toolbar so all my profiles can be accessed easily.
3. Along with my other tasks, I regularly create a brief to do list for things I would like to do on each site. (i.e.; Flickr: load yesterday’s conference photos)

Start Your Social Session: To decrease the possibilities of spending too much time on one site and getting sidetracked (which is extremely easy to do!), I like to open all the social networking sites at once and break up the time accordingly for each one as follows:

1. From the Social folder that was created, I choose “Open All in Tabs” so that all my profiles open at once in tabbed windows.
2. I then go through each tabbed window, one by one, closing each tab after spending only the allotted time for each site.
3. Once I do a run through, I check off my to do list and move on (sticking to my schedule!).
4. If I do find something interesting that will take up more time, I make a note or bookmark it, and come back to it later during my flexible time.

Important! Lately, I have been extra busy with appointments and networking in the real world, and so my online work schedule has been bumped and sidetracked. In this case, I scratched the social time in order to catch up with tasks of higher priority. Obviously, your level of priority may differ, but I believe scheduling your social time may help, if you’re not doing it already.