5 Simple steps to track your time
I don’t know about you but I think I am spending way too much time on social media at the moment, and I think my husband would agree! Of course, it’s important for me to keep on top of everything for my business, researching my competitor’s activity, learning new skills and promoting my services. However, coupled with personal browsing, at times it’s all a bit much.
Scheduling
For my business, I’ve started diarising a block time each week to plan and schedule social media. It’s a much more focused and smarter way to work. I put 2 hours aside which is dedicated time to read, research, review various articles, blogs and competitor activity, and to schedule the posts I want to go out that week.
I’ve been using the free Buffer app which is more than adequate and simple to use, with some useful analytics too. You can set the schedule, dictating the day and time that you want to post specific to your chosen platforms. By planning this ahead, rather than on an adhoc basis you can be much more targeted. Your posts can hit down at the peak times when you have the largest audiences. When this is varies across the different platforms.
Peak Audience Times
Analysis shows that for Facebook peak is Wednesdays at 3pm, Twitter is 1pm to 3pm Monday to Thursday, and LinkedIn is Tuesday to Thursday at 12pm and 5pm. Generally speaking the weekends are down times for social media, because we are off doing something more important instead.
Time Tracking
In my day to day schedule, I’m also using the Toggl app to track time spent on actual tasks, like social media planning. This helps me establish how long stuff physically takes to get done, and helps when billing clients for my time. You can use Toggl for anything. It doesn’t even have to be business stuff. It’s a simple click on and off tool, and you can access it on your phone or desktop. It will collate everything into a simple dashboard and pull together little reports for you. And yes, it’s free too.
So, using Buffer and Toggl I’m pretty geared up to work more efficiently but what about my personal social media addiction? Well this week, I’ve also been researching and trying out various apps on the market to track usage. I’ve landed with an IOS app called Moment which works in conjunction with your iPhone settings.
5 Simple Steps
It’s really simple to use and for me the results have been pretty startling! Why don’t you take a quick look at your phone (and I mean quick) and see for yourself? You don’t need the app for now, if you have an iPhone just follow these 5 steps:
- Click on Settings
- Click on Battery
- Scroll down to Battery Usage
- Click on Last 7 Days
- Click on the Clock symbol next to Last 7 Days
If you’ve clicked correctly you should now be looking at how much screen time you’ve spent on each application across the last week, or 24 hours if you prefer that view. What do you think? More or less than you thought? I’m going to guess it’s more. Moment can go a step further with this info, and tell you how may times you pick up your phone or device, whilst managing usage for you, setting reminders and timers to curb excessive screen time. I am going to see how this pans out for me across the next few weeks, and what changes I can make.
Of course, how you manage your time is up to you. I think it just helps to have a sense check sometimes. If you need any support to manage your time better, at work or at home, then I’d be more than happy to help you. Drop me an email ann@thepaportal.co.uk
Time is precious, waste it wisely.