How many social media sites are you actively engaging on? By that, do you at least visit that site a few times a week? How many do you visit daily? How many do you visit several times a day?

For me, I put Facebook, LinkedIn, and more recently Pinterest and Twitter into the category of active engagement, as in I visit those sites daily, and sometimes more than once during the day.

So, those of you who live and breathe social media may be saying – big deal! Isn’t that what you are supposed to do?

Maybe that’s what the “experts” say, but I am the expert in my own life. And for me, adding social media in the mix of a life that was already pretty darn busy has truly become a balancing act.

I don’t bring this up much, but for this post it is appropriate that I tell you that yes, I still have a “day” job and one that I love. I work as an enrollment advisor for the College for Financial Planning in a suburb of Denver.

It is an intense 8-5 job, or sometimes 7-4 depending on the day of the week. Plus I live 16 miles from my office, so the commute ranges from 30-50 minutes depending on the time of day.

Then I am quite involved, some might say “addicted” to Toastmasters,  and belong to three Toastmasters clubs and am helping a 4th one get started. That’s another approximately 15 hours a week for my favorite hobby, as I am keen on improving my speaking and leadership skills and helping others to do the same.

The reason I bring all these things up is that I believe that there are a number of other people out there like me – working a day job, launching a business, and active in a range of volunteer and service activities.

How does a person then find time to add social media into their day? Good question! It is one I ask myself regularly.

As with so many other things, the answer is “it depends.”

It depends on what you hope to gain from social media.

Maybe you use it strictly recreationally to keep up with the comings and goings of family and friends. Then perhaps your use could be more sporadic.

Maybe you use it to learn more about your professional field or an entirely new body of knowledge. Or maybe you use social media to learn more about how to use social media.

Then your use might become more regular, or at least targeted in terms of the times of day and/or days of the week when you are on social media.

This list could go on and on.

The bottom line for me is to strike a balance between my commitments to my employer, my husband, and others who count on me and my use of social media.

As much as I enjoy and benefit from social media, I don’t want to find myself becoming obsessed with it.

What are your experiences around weaving social media into the rest of your life?

                       

Joyce Feustel, Founder of Boomers’ Social Media Tutor, helps people relatively new to social media to become more effective and comfortable in their use of this medium. Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com