My Social Media Workflow

  By Tac Anderson | February 22, 2012 - 2:20 am | New

I get a lot of questions about how I manage all the content I create online. I’m sure it sometimes seems like I just spend all day tweeting and blogging. The total amount of time I spend each day is probably about two hours. I spend an hour first thing in the morning writing and reading and then I have 3 or 4 scheduled breaks throughout the day of about 10 – 15 minutes each. If I didn’t have this system and didn’t regulate my time, I could easily spend all day doing this and not getting my actual job done.

Two hours can still seem like a lot for some people. I’m fortunate that this is still work related and that two hours counts the time I spend reading the stuff I post, so if you counted how much of your day is spent reading blog posts and online news, if you took the time to set up your own system and added one or two minutes to each post you read, you could easily post multiple times online and not have it impact your time management.

But thanks to ifttt.com, and Buffer, I can limit my time to a couple of hours, crank out 20 – 30 posts a day on Tumblr and this blog, and still reach all of my friends here in Europe and back home in North America, where most of my followers are.

I recorded a little video of my workflow so you can see how it’s done. It’s my first time using Camtasia (sorry about the loud typing). After recording the video I realized that it’s still kind of hard to visualize, so I used SmartDraw to put together this diagram. Hope that helps.

social media workflow

You can see my social media workflow here on this Quora board I created.

Please let me know what questions you still have and I’ll do my best to clear it all up. I know this can be overwhelming if you’re not used to all the geekery.

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About Tac Anderson

Social media anthropologist. Communications strategist. Business model junkie. Chief blogger here at New Comm Biz.
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  • http://twitter.com/marcopolis Marco Campana

    This is really helpful, really useful. Thanks for taking the time to share how you do what you do with us! Much to digest here.

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com/ tacanderson

    Glad to hear this was useful. As you digest, please let me know what questions come up. 

  • http://www.louisgray.com/live/ Louis Gray

    Apologies, Tac, but “social media workflow” is copyright and trademarked by louisgray.com LLC LTD LOL.

    See:

    April 2008
    http://blog.louisgray.com/2008/04/my-social-media-consumption-workflow.html

    October 2008
    http://blog.louisgray.com/2008/10/social-media-workflow-on-iphone.html

    May 2009
    http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/05/know-and-master-your-social-media-data.html

    My people will be in touch with your people.

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com/ tacanderson

    You mean that @louismg:disqus still blogs? I thought he got swallowed by the Plex :)  

  • http://www.louisgray.com/live/ Louis Gray

    Them’s fightin’ woids.

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com/ tacanderson

    You gotta give me some slack, while it’s not in my flow chart, I still managed to work Google+ into the video. That counts for some sort of fair use doesn’t it? 

  • http://twitter.com/Djonckheere Darryl Jonckheere

    You’re kidding, right? What about ‘Social Media Consumption Workflow’ and ‘Social Media Data Flow’. 

  • http://www.louisgray.com/live/ Louis Gray

    Only @tacanderson:disqus knows if I am kidding.

  • http://www.louisgray.com/live/ Louis Gray

    I will possibly let this pass.

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com/ tacanderson

    I already had a highly attuned sense for sarcasm, but now that I’ve been living in London, it’s only even more sensitive and I can tell you that Louis, never jokes. Ever. 

  • http://laurentmaumet.com/ lmau

    I like this post, and especially the video.
    You’ve convinced me to go back to feedly !
    1 question : do you also use iPad to read blogs ? If yes, what is your “iPad social media workflow”  (I’m sure that this one is not copyriright by Louis Gray as iPad did not exist back in 2008)

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com/ tacanderson

    I don’t have an iPad, I have a Galaxy Tab and I still use Feedly for Android. But with Feedly for Android (not on iOS though) you can share from one app to another, so I can still share to Tumblr, so my workflow stays the same. And since I’m using Android, Louis should still be happy.

  • http://twitter.com/luckylou Luis Antezana (luckylou)

    Let’s just be honest and admit you’re a well-disciplined, very intelligent, freakin’ Terminator. I actually feel guilty about myself now. Well done. (And to clarify, since sarcasm is in the conversational mix here, I am not using sarcasm.)

    My first question involves volume of reading. You list a ton of sources on which you stay abreast yet you say you spend two hours total time reading AND posting in a day. How is that remotely possible for a non-Tac/Terminator human? Just one good article takes me a while, then I ruminate on it and spin ideas, then if I post about it I write and refine. This alone can take my simple brain 20+ minutes. How much are you processing and how much is speed-reading-esque input and re-posting? I don’t mean this in a facetious way.

    Second, what is your standpoint on cross-posting to different properties? Your first example is posted to Tumblr and Google+. Are you trying to reach the maximum audience with your singular message? Are some ideas suitable for multiple properties and only then do you post to the relevant outlets? Is it just easier than modifying a message to suit the strengths of each property?

    Third, you start with Feedly, but then go to Tumblr and then to Techmeme, but can’t you get the last one in Feedly anyway?

    Good to see you use Buffer, btw. Will check out Diigo. Group curation is a desirable feature.

    Finally, a Tumblr feedback: You occasionally post a headline with a short comment underneath. I figured it out the first time but it is definitely not apparent that your headline is actually a link. At first glance it just looks like you have some very tiny blog entries!

    Thanks

  • http://laurentmaumet.com/ lmau

    Ok! I’ve just installed feedly on my galaxy note to give it a try.

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com/ tacanderson

    Let me know how it goes. 

  • http://www.newcommbiz.com/ tacanderson

    Great questions. I’ll do my best to answer them. 

    First, on reading volume. I don’t read all the posts. That’s one of the nice things about Feedly, is that it recommends posts based on what I regularly read. I scan lots of headlines to find things that are interesting. 

    Second, if we do the math on volume and let’s say you average 10 minutes for each post you read (accounting for some speed reading) and another 10 minutes to write a few lines or thoughts. (Remember we’re talking average because sometimes I just quote part of the article). So 20 minutes over 2 hours, that’s still 6 posts a day, at the most conservative. With practice, I’d argue it would be pretty easy to double that and then accounting for some reblogging, it would be very easy to get to 20 posts a day. 

    For the purposes of this post, I just focused on my “New Comm Biz” content, which is work, business, social media stuff, anything I post in that area would be subtable for all of the branded channels I cross post to and my personal Twitter and Google+ account. The main difference is that I don’t post most of that stuff to my personal Facebook account and I post a lot of personal stuff to my personal Twitter account. This post didn’t cover my personal updates, pictures and stuff. 

    Third, I could get all of that through Feedly but I like keeping some sources seperate. I like the community aspect of Tumbr and you don’t get that in Feedly. I also check Techmeme several times a day anyway because most of my clients are in tech. 

    On the final note, that’s one of the things about Tumblr with the links. There are some themes that make this more apparent than others, so maybe I should play around with those. Good feedback. Thanks Lou. 

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