Posts Tagged ‘Tips’

Jan

2011

05

Category:

Capacity, Mindfulness

Tags:

14 Comments

Time Management for Nonprofit Social Media Professionals: What’s Your Best Tip?

Photo by hmcotterill

In the nonprofit sector, time is our most valuable resource.   It can’t be recycled if we squander it.

Distractions are time wasters and you need to manage them not the other way around.    Some interruptions come from our physical environment.  Co-workers stop at your desk to chat or a colleague asks you to compile a report.   Distractions come from the  Internet if  you have email,  Twitter, or mobile phone beeping at you.  Or if  you’ve developed the bad habit of mindless checking of your social sites or other social media bad habits.

Distractions can be internal and come from our brains, our thoughts.   We think of something else we need to do while we are in the middle doing something else.   Or it is negative thoughts that can distract.

What do time management techniques and good habits look like in an age of connectedness?

Photo by TBN98

You Say Tomato,  I say Pomodoro

I stumbled across the Pomodoro technique which is very similar to time boxing  (assigning discrete blocks of time to a particular task and using a timer), but the method also gives you some ways to prioritize work.

I keep a big hairy to do list or inventory.  I jot down projects on the list just to get it out of my head and to figure out how to break them down into smaller chunks.  This minimizes internal distractions for me.   Then I review the list and pick the three most important things
that need to get done that day and put those on an index card on my desk.  Sometimes  I time box those tasks to help me focus.     I also time box tasks that are open-ended, like answering email or participating on social media sites and do these in short 15-30 minute bursts in between the three big tasks on the index card.

Most of our work as social media nonprofit professionals is to be present on our online communities, listen, engage, and manage content.  But for many, those tasks are not necessarily the whole job even if your organization culture is streamlined and simple.

How do you balance your to do list of discrete projects with your daily social media activities that are open-ended?   How you shift between the two types of work?

Schedule Legos


The to do list and breaking down tasks into doable chunks is one dimension of time management, but how you lay out those tasks over your schedule is another.   In this video, Chris Brogan talks about how he manages his time.  I like how he takes a designer’s approach to using his time.  It made me think of building stuff with legos.   He takes you through a 6-hour chunk of time in half-hour and hour increments.    He clearly identifies types of tasks: planning (prep to do the task), reading,  production (writing), interviews, email, and commenting.

He doesn’t share how and when he take breaks which are essential to focus and concentration.    Also, in practice, many people may not have that much control over their work day, especially those working in a nonprofit organizations.

How do you design your work day?

Brain Fitness

Source: Lumosity Site

Concentration is part of our brain’s function and if your brain isn’t fit – you won’t concentrate or perform well.  There is the mind-body connection which boils down to taking care of yourself.  Getting exercise, taking breaks, drinking water, and making time for solitude.

There is also a rhythm to concentration.  The time of the day can also impact your ability to concentrate.    Are you better at tasks like writing that require a deeper level of attention and concentration in the morning or afternoon?    If morning is your best concentration time, don’t squander it on a task that doesn’t demand focus like answering email.

I’ve charted myself according to times when I reach peak levels of concentration and try as much as can to schedule tasks require it.

If you’re doing social media for your organization,  how are you managing your time effectively?   What area of time management do you need to improve to have your organization’s social media more effective?   Any secrets or tips to share?  Come join us in the Zoetica Forum where we are talking about Social Media Tune Ups this month.

Jul

2010

08

Category:

Networked Nonprofit, Tips, Tools and Tactics

Tags:

9 Comments

Twitter Tip for Networked Nonprofits: Follow the Few To Get To the Many

Source: Valdis Krebs

For the past few years whenever I doing a training or speak about nonprofits and social media and more recently when we’ve presented about the book, The Networked Nonprofit, someone always raises this concern:   “Social media is a time suck.”

Networked Nonprofits are not only experts in using social media, but they know how to streamline their work flow often based on an understanding of applying network theory to their practice.  One of the best principles I learned was from Valdis Krebs  who suggests following fewer people to get to the many in his classic post  “So Many People, So Little Time.”

It isn’t about following thousands and thousands of friends on Twitter.  We don’t have the time or brain cells for that.    It’s about finding people who are connected to different social circles and following them.    Of course you have to be interested in what information or conversations they are sharing on Twitter.   Identifying these people or what Krebs calls “nodes” is core of social network analysis.

And you need to build some redundancy in your network so you have a few multiple paths to people and ideas of interest to you.

He explains why this approach is efficient:

For the time invested, I want maximum return. I use the redundancy of connections, between the many social circles I am interested in, to my advantage. I follow a select group of people that give me the same access as following someone in every group. Follow the few to reach the many!

Strategically I am building a small, yet efficient, group that reaches out into the many diverse information pools I am interested in. I know I am finding good people to follow on Twitter by the number of great exchanges that emerge on many topics. Think before you follow, use your time and ties wisely!

What if  you have been following people without thinking and now have an overloaded Twitter Stream?  Here are some tips that help you tame the Twitter lion.

What is most important to find and cultivate the connectors and weavers in communities or topics of interest.   There are some free tools that can help you visualize your Twitter network or do quasi social network analysis on Twitter.   Here’s a few that I’ve used.

Use Friend or Follow to download a spreadsheet of followers. Sort the information to find  people to get to know.  This works best if you have small network.

Mr. Tweet finds people in your network you should follow (use this after you have built up your following list).

Mailana can help you identify people who have strong affinity.   I wrote about an experiment I did last year using this tool.  One problem is that it doesn’t analyze your network in real time.  You submit the userid and then have to come back a few days later unless it is already in the database.

Twitalyzer is a terrific analytics tool that gives you some good benchmarking metrics for Twitter. Run the  impact report to help you identify influencers.

Twiangulate lets you analyze cross over between your Twitter network and another Twitter user.  This can be useful to find potential collaborators.

Klout lets you track the “influence” of specific Twitter users, including the growth of their network, who they influence, and who they are influenced by.

Mention Map helps you visualize who is interacting with you around which hashtags.  It shows nodes on your network.   There is not information about what exactly how the drawings are created though.

Once you’ve started to identify connectors and people to follow, you’ll need to manage it.  Twitter lists can help you create sub-groups of all your followers.

Create Twitter Lists of those accounts, organized by topic or community
Keep the lists small and manageable
Add these lists to your Twitter client and set up a schedule to monitor.   This makes the Twitter content feel more grounded, as opposed to just flying by.
Create Twitter searches for keywords to find additional sources. Follow them as needed
Tend to your lists regularly and unfollow people who don’t provide value to you, perhaps people who tweet about things you are not interested in.

If you were stranded on a deserted island, and could only follow 150 people, who would you follow?

Apply a little social networking theory and think before you follow.   Ask yourself, if you were stuck on desert island and could only follow 150 people, who would you choose?  How many people do you follow and why?  How do you manage it?