Social Media

How may times do you check your social media account during a given day? Yes, just check to see how things are going in your own world. Well, it really isn’t your world but it the world that the internet has created that helped define what you see and when you see it. I am only going to be talking about the social media that I know about and I know that there is a lot more out there that can grab your attention.

I do know that there are businesses that have actually implemented a policy so that you are unable to check any social media during the day. In a lot of ways I think that is a wonderful idea because if it isn’t part of your core job then why should you be checking it when you should be working. I can say this honestly because part of one of my jobs is to monitor a social media account to make sure no one is posting bad messages on a client page.

Social media be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or anything else they can all take away from the productivity of an individual. Just logging into one of these accounts for a minute can result in an hour or so just lost because of the number of things that you can find that will catch your attention. Oh, what about that wonderful cat video, baby video or article that gets mentions. I am just going to go and check that one thing and then I will get back to work. How many times have you said that and then realized you have lost an hour without realizing it. Yes, so that is why some businesses block social media from being available during the day.

To be productive even when you are monitoring social media as part of your job you need to learn that you can check it but then you need to do something so that you don’t get distracted easily by all the other things that are going on around you. I have actually heard people get upset when a company decides it is time to block social media on the company devices during the normal business day. Some people have complained saying they have the right to check their social media during the day because they need to know what is going on in the world. Sure, you may feel like you need to know what is going on in the world during the day but what did we do before social media was part of our lives.

For me, I grew up and didn’t have social media as part of my everyday life so I can actually not check things sometimes. Sure, I get some of the media emails but even those can go ignored for hours at a time so why can’t people live without all the social media during the business day. If you need to check social media during the day that is what lunch time is for. Yes, lose your lunch hour checking everything but realize that once your lunch time is up it is time to disconnect again and get back to work.

I do monitor a Facebook page and a twitter account for a client so that means that I am on both of them during the day. What I have had to do is once I have done the checking I will either log out of the social media page so that it isn’t a distraction or I will minimize the program and then get back to work. Sure, there will be the days that I get a bit distracted on something but I have had to learn that if I want to get all the other things done that require my time I need to limit the amount of time I have the social media feed “yelling” at me throughout the day.

Social media is great for some quick communication and connecting with people but knowing that it can be a distraction when you are trying to get work done is important. Just by making sure you can control the time you spend on it is important. When you are at work your social media accounts shouldn’t be something you access when you should be working. Your social media accounts are for your evenings and weekends. If you miss something well maybe it wasn’t that important because it just flew by on your newsfeed. If someone really wanted to ensure you knew about something there is email and phone and both of those work great for the important stuff.