Between Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, Flickr, Delicious, and Facebook, Internet marketers can find that social media becomes a serious time drain over time.
Keeping up with your presence on these social sites can be a challenge, especially if you don't know how to prioritize the time you spend on each site.
The guide below will help you get your social media mania under control - and help you cover all your bases in only 20 minutes per day.
2 minutes: Check your Google Alerts.
If you haven't already, set up a Google Alert for your name, your website URL, your company, and specific product names.
Then select the "once a day digest" so that you get a daily e-mail updating you about every reference to your target search terms on the Web.
You can quickly scan these alerts and determine whether a response would be helpful or necessary.
5 minutes: Do a Twitter search for your name, your website URL, your company, and specific product names.
To save even more time, you can also set up an RSS feed for each Twitter search and have the feed delivered directly to a service such as Google Reader.
Then respond to at least 5-10 @ and direct messages from followers and post a new Tweet of your own.
5 minutes: Scan your Facebook Insights page to evaluate your Fan Page's performance.
Check the page views from the previous day to see if you had any changes in traffic and look to see if you've added new "fans.
" Then respond to any direct messages in your Facebook inbox and take the time to comment on at least two updates from friends on the site.