Social media can eat your time. One minute you’re rolling up to your desk, coffee in hand, tummy full of eggy muggin, and the next you’ve got five-o’clock shadow and an angry tummy demanding dinner, or a chocolate bar. Usually a chocolate bar. All because you decided to check the company Instagram.

Instagram led to YouTube, and then you had to tweet all of the hilarious cat company culture videos you found, and post a bunch of the links from your Twitter feed onto your Facebook Page… and then you realized that all of your co-workers had gone home, and the janitor was giving you the evil eye.

Not optimal.

Don’t get me wrong, I spend a lot of time on various social networks for work, but nowhere near as much time as you would think considering my job title. If I spent all day on Facebook and Twitter, I would have no time to write these blog posts, attend meetings, or come up with better social media strategies to keep us evolving.

Spending more time on social media does not necessarily get you better results, and in fact, it can even hinder them. If you’re too busy checking your Instagram feed to go over your Instagram analytics, update your content strategy, or regularly check in with your co-workers and clients, then you need to rethink things.

Here’s how I keep my social media-obsessing in check, prioritize tasks, and keep myself sane, all while staying social.

Assess the Situation

It’s impossible to change your situation unless you know what your situation is.

Maybe you think you’re spending 30 minutes per day posting content to your Facebook Page, but in reality it’s more like two hours when you take into account how long it takes you to search for content, curate it, and add in a bunch of hashtags.

Time-Saving Tips:

• Make a list of the social networks and apps you use.

• Spend one or two days tracking exactly how much time you spend on each network and app.

• Reorder your list to reflect time spent, and clearly note how many hours you devoted to each.

Now you have a solid understanding of how much time you are spending on social media, and exactly how that time is spent.

Prioritize

You only have so much time in your day, so you need to divide that time wisely.

The more effective a social network is for your goals, the more time you should devote to it. Chances are, you’re neglecting some networks that deserve more of your time, and you’re still using some networks that deserve none of it.

Time-Saving Tips:

• Go over your analytics and make a list (if you hadn’t noticed, I’m really into lists!) of the social networks you use, ordering them from most effective to least effective.

• Compare your two lists.

• Be shocked by the results.

Attention! Not to state the obvious, but if you spent two hours / week on Facebook and that resulted in ten applications, and you spent 8 hours / week on Twitter that resulted in fifteen applications, then Facebook is the more effective of the two. Yay math!

Create Guidelines

Now that you have all of this super-useful information at your fingertips, it’s time to make another list! I’m kidding… kind of!

Actually it’s time to lay down some guidelines for how to divvy up your socializing.

Time-Saving Tips:

• Decide how many hours you have to spend on social media. Aim low!

• Budget out that time. Allot more time for the social networks that get you great results, and less for the networks you’ve found to be less effective.

• Consider dropping some social networks altogether. If Vine hasn’t driven a single applicant to your career site, you probably don’t need to make it a part of your social strategy.

Bring in the Big Guns

• A content strategy template will help you manage the content you post. Here’s a basic content strategy setup for Facebook.  You can also check out this blog post if you want specifics on improving your content strategy for recruiting. 

• Social apps can save you tons of time. The Jobcast Facebook Recruitment App‘s Enterprise plan takes care of all of your Facebook Ads, job posts, and content management for you, and it’s also totally mobile-friendly! Hootsuite lets you manage Twitter lists and hashtags, which can save you hours every week.

• Scheduling tools like Buffer App help you line up all of your content at once, instead of having to manually share it throughout the day. Hootsuite, and Jobcast already have scheduling tools built in.

• Content curation platforms, like Alltop, help you stay on top of trending topics in your field, without having to spend a bunch of time surfing the web.

• Pocket is a reading list app that let’s you save blog posts, and sort them with tags, so that you’ll have a steady stream of  content to share.

Give these strategies a try, and hopefully you’ll never end up stuck in a social media vortex again. If you have any great time saving tips, let us know in the comments.

Happy social recruiting!