Productive people use social media, but they typically use it very differently than how most people do and perhaps how you're using it right now. For so many people, it is such a huge, huge time waster because they have every intention of starting productive work at 9am. And they just take one quick peek at Facebook and Wow, look at how this person from high school blew up. Let's check what's going on there. Half an hour is gone. Yes, you can use social media.

I'm not one of these Luddites, who says Oh, ignore all of that, and just sit at your desk and type out. Now. I'm not suggesting that. You can use social media, but there has to be a focus and a plan. Now, if your whole business model revolves around having a Facebook page that has 10 million followers, because that's how you sell all your other products and services, then, yeah, you're gonna have to maybe stay focused and have a Facebook page open at all times on one of your screens on your desk. I understand that most of us are not that dependent on any one social media platform.

My recommendation is figure out what's going to be your dominant social media platform, you cannot be all things to all people, whether you're a one person organization, or a part of a huge corporation. The exception of course, is if you're the Social Media Manager for a fortune 500 company, well, then you may have to be monitoring it, all of them at all times. But for everyone else, there needs to be some selectivity. And again, to use this word you've heard me use so many times. Focus what is going to be your dominant platform for some of you, it may be Instagram, others it may be Twitter. And then you got to put things into I think, basically, three categories.

Something that you're most important that you're going to do something where you're going to have a presence. And those you're simply going to ignore. Many, many years ago, I set up something on Foursquare, I don't go to Foursquare anymore. It's just one I ignore. YouTube has traditionally been one of the outlets that has been most powerful for me. And I've gotten a lot of traction there.

And I do put videos up not every single day like I used to, but certainly several every single week. So that's important to me. Facebook is important for my business page. Now I have a personal page and I put personal video clips and pictures of my family out on vacations and things like that as a way of saving time so I don't have to take pictures and mail them to my sisters and relatives. But there has to be limitations. I try to look briefly in the morning and then sometimes once at night.

It's not Something I'm going back and forth to all day long. So that's the big picture figure, if there is something that really helps your business, go deeper than that. Put great original content and respond to people start conversations. For everything else, figure out what do you just want to have some presence on so you can be reacting. That's how LinkedIn is to me. I use LinkedIn in a very specialized way.

I use it primarily as a way of staying in touch with clients who have now gone on to other jobs, so I no longer have their accurate email address. But I can reach out to them and ask them, How are your presentations going, how your speeches how your media interviews going? So quite often, five, even 10 years after I've worked with someone, because I've reached out to them, they will hire me again. So there's a very specific business purpose, but I'm not going on posting all the time on there. So you've got to really figure out what is most important to you. What social media outlets, my advice, pick one, the others if you want to have some presence, and then don't waste time, trying to be everywhere.

Don't be on every single social media platform because you'll just end up spinning your wheels and wasting time. And then the final element here is you got to schedule your time that you're going to focus on it could be 10 minutes in the morning. Could be 10 minutes a week with some sites. But manage it, schedule it. It can't just be Oh, I don't really feel like working hard yet. Monday morning.

It's 930. Let me check it and then it's lunchtime. And all you've done is look at trivia on six different social media sites. That is a huge, huge productivity killer. productive people use social media, a plan purpose focused, scheduled limited way