Freelance-Zone.com reached out to Joan Stewart, a speaker, trainer and consultant who blogs at Publicity Hound and My Social Media Solution and she shared a great tip on time management in terms of how to find space in your day to utilize social media…

One of our customers told me this morning how frustrated she is that she doesn’t have enough time to spend on social media.

I suggested that she set aside a block of time twice a day, say as soon as she starts work in the morning and again before she closes the office for the day, to blog, post to her Facebook and Twitter profiles and do what needs to be done on LinkedIn.

When she hemmed and hawed about how difficult it would be to find the time, I asked her, “”How much time do you spend on email each day?”

“A lot,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because it’s a way for me to check in with my clients and other people who I like to hear from,” she said.

“How profitable is answering email?” I asked.

“Not very,” she said.

That’s when it dawned on me that her schedule—-and mine-—should be reversed. She should spend the same amount of time on social media that she now spends answering email, and vice versa.

But for some people, me included, that’s like asking a junkie to just stop using.

I wonder how many other people complain about never having time for social media, but check email 15 times a day, every day, and find themselves catching up on news at news sites, watching funny videos a friend sent to them, or frittering away time on the million other distractions in their email boxes.

I’m entering email rehab.

Starting today, I’m going to try really hard to change these bad habits:

    * I’m going to try to check email only three times a day:  in the morning, at lunch time, and in the late afternoon.
    * When I’m not checking email, Outlook will NOT be running. (Why be tempted?)
    * Try to whittle down email responses to half their usual  size.

That should free up more time to blog, answer questions on Linked In, engage in more conversations on Twitter, and be more productive.

Want to help? Please share your own tips on how you make more time for social media.

What rules have you set up for yourself? What are you doing differently, and where are you seeing the biggest return on your investment of time—on social media or in your email?

Joan Stewart, aka The Publicity Hound, blogs at http://www.PublicityHound.net and at http://www.MySocialMediaSolution.com/blog.