I think I have a problem.
I spend too much time on Facebook. I find myself constantly opening a new tab and the first letter I would hit would be “F”. Does that sound familiar to you?
While that may sound okay, it’s not. I was killing tons of productive time that I could have spent getting work done.
Today, I am happy to share the secret of saving time on Facebook.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d want to get more results from Facebook and spend less time there.
According to a study by Vertical Response, the following stats are a very insightful.
- One third of CEOs and business owners want to spend less time on social media.
- 90% of those are on Facebook.
- 15% of these people log into Facebook several times a day.
You can imagine how tough it is to run a business and maintaining an active Facebook presence. How can all of us follow the 80/20 rule and still achieve remarkable results on giant platforms like Facebook?
In order to do that, we have to understand where we’re spending too much time. Based on the insights provided by Vertical Response, the top three ways people were wasting their time on were:
- Finding & posting content
- Learning and educating themselves
- Analyzing efforts
Here are my four top tips on how to stop wasting time on Facebook.
1. Get rid of distractions
There are two ways you can avoid distractions.
- Less Extreme: Log out
Logging out is not a very extreme method and is quite easy to do. However, it doesn’t solve the issue completely because you won’t be able to get all your work done if you need to use Facebook.
The problem with this method is you won’t be able to get any work on Facebook done.
- Pretty Extreme: Delete newsfeed
The pretty extreme method is the method that I chose for myself, which was to delete my newsfeed. I use News Feed eradicator.
That way I could focus on getting work done like finding content and educating yourself (using lists, bookmarks, etc). Since only my News Feed disappears, I can still manage my Facebook page presence and respond to people easily.
2. Schedule content in advance
If you want to save more time, you have to schedule in advance. Facebook has a great built in feature that allow business owners to easily schedule their posts.
That way you can plan ahead to make more time in your week.
You can easily do this in one sitting and actually schedule a week worth of content. Use the spare time you have saved to focus more on responding to customers or educating yourself.
This keeps you focused and you won’t miss a day without posting any content.
3. Get the right tools
I was just speaking to a business owner the other day, not only is he managing his company, he is managing his company presence on Facebook too. He told me it was tough to find the right balance. Tools can help because they help the hard work for you. Take Post Planner for example. Besides helping you schedule content, some of its features include:
- Status ideas: Over 13,000+ status to chose from.
- Viral photo: Easily find the most viral photos from any pages to share.
- Trending Content: Search the hottest topics by key terms.
Post Planner is built to help find and schedule content within a few clicks so you won’t need to worry about your content for weeks.
Scott Ayers singlehandedly finds and adds over 2-3 weeks of content for our Post Planner’s Facebook page in one sitting. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the amount of content that we post daily.
4. Use Facebook features
Facebook do have some great built-in features that you can use to save tons of time without killing productivity. Here are some of my favourite features from them.
a. Lists
Lists allow you to follow pages without worrying about the effects of newsfeed algorithm. This means you go into Facebook and focus on the news that you want to follow. No, your friend’s cute puppies should not be in that list.
b. Facebook’s Save
“Saving” is a new feature from Facebook that allows you to save articles that you find interesting. All you have to do is click save and head over to to your home page to view them later.
c. Favorite
Marking your favorite pages can save you time because you won’t need to constantly check your newsfeed and worrying you’ll miss its posts. When you add a page to your favorites, it will notify you when the pages are updated.
Summing up
So you see, using Facebook can be productive for your business. It’s not a time sucker and you don’t always have to waste your time when you are on Facebook. Using these tips you can easily focus your effort without stressing yourself about it.
What do you do?
How do you save time on Facebook and still maintaining an active presence? Look forward to hearing about your tips and insights in the comments below.
Read More: Why I Would Give Up Facebook In A Heartbeat