Just over 4 months ago, I decided to get active on Twitter.

Even though I had created a Twitter account back in 2009, I didn’t see much point in getting active on Twitter until I had a website for my business. Plus I wanted to get my business blog established before joining the Twitter crowd.

Even though I can more or less find my way around Twitter, I still just dip into the Twitter stream in little dibs and dabs.

On a typical day, I will check into Twitter about 2-3 times a day and tweet about 6-8 times in total for a day. That counts my retweets (sharing of other’s tweets), so I am still not that active compared to many people I follow.

My main purpose for using Twitter is to find tips on using social media that can share via my blog posts and with my clients.

There are probably all kinds of interesting posts that I miss, yet I realize that if I am supposed to find something via Twitter, it’ll happen eventually.

Although Twitter has been around since 2006, Pinterest didn’t really take off until 2011, yet it has become very popular in a short period of time.

Pinterest, being more of a content curation site, has a different format than Twitter. And like Twitter, it is very easy to use. I got involved in Pinterest early this summer through a friend sending me an invite.

It took a few months before I integrated Pinterest into the social media rhythms of my day, yet now I check out Pinterest on a daily basis. I find the visuals very appealing. Plus I am learning how to tie some of my Pinterest boards to my business.

 

Since Pinterest can tend to be addictive, I tell myself I will spend no more than 10 minutes or so on it. Typically I repin (share) about 5-6 items into my boards.

I go into this level of detail about using Twitter and Pinterest to show that you can get something out of these sites (or any social media platform) by just dipping into that site for brief periods each day.

Social media doesn’t have to be a time drain unless you let it be.

How much time are you spending on your primary social media sites? How do you discipline yourself in the use of your time?

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