To help you tackle this problem head on, here are three helpful tips to managing your time like a pro:

Take Charge of Your Productivity

As an entrepreneur, it is incredibly hard to fight that tendency to allow the first thing that catches your attention to determine where you spend your day’s time. Similarly, it is hard to resist the urge to constantly task-switch as unexpected events, news, problems, and chaos arise throughout your day.

While there may not be an all-in-one powerful solution, outlining and defining the goals and objectives of a productive day’s work can be a very helpful step in managing your productivity. My tool of choice for to-do list and goal management is idonext. Idonext has a simple and intuitive web-based interface that allows you to manage your productivity by: writing up a quick list of tasks, uploading any corresponding files and images to those tasks, and sharing those tasks with others to ensure you get the job done.

Schedule Your Email Checking

Let’s be real for a second. How many times per day do you find yourself checking your email? If you answered more than 2 times then I would suggest revamping your email management strategy.

How do you do this? There are several ways to tackle this problem, but I find that the easiest is simply planning a certain time period a day to manage email. High-peak email times tend to be early in the morning (8:00-9a.m.) and right before the day is over (4:00-5p.m.), so I always make sure these time periods are deemed my “email-management” time.

To help maximize your use of this time and limit unnecessary distractions (whether that be email-marketing messages or spam), try implementing an email-overload tool such as Otherinbox to presort your mail for you and present you with the gist. For those that use Gmail and feel pressure to respond to certain individuals immediately, check out Syphir. With this tool you can easily create sophisticated rules that alert you of incoming messages of those people that you absolutely must respond to right away.

Take a Hold of Your Social Media, Don’t let it Take a Hold of You!

Now I think it is safe to say that most of us understand the vital role that social media can play in everything from marketing, to drawing in readers, to teasing out potential customers, but it is extremely important to ensure that it does not end up consuming your day!

To avoid this, there are a couple of very simple steps you can take, such as implementing a quick social media management system and scheduling your social media marketing time. For most, a simple and effective free management system such as Hootsuite should do the trick. Hootsuite allows you to review brand mentions, keywords and phases, Twitter username mentions, Twitter direct messages, Facebook messages, and Facebook comments that people leave on your pages.

As far as the scheduling goes, reserving social media management time for that period when you tend to see more Tweets and Facebook updates usually works pretty well. Tuesdays and Wednesdays tend to bring the highest click-through rates for wall posts on Facebook. As far as Twitter is concerned, Tweeting between 1pm – 2pm has been suggested to lead to the most exposure. So, schedule accordingly!

After reading these recommendations, what do you think? Are there any other killer apps or methods that help you manage your time like a pro?

Now, if you are a bigger brand it can be easy to set up a social media profile and have a couple thousand people “like” the profile and actively engage it, but for a smaller business this process can be excrementally harder. Many businesses try to leverage deals and such but without fans, this approach will not succeed. This is why I like to advocate taking your social media approach off of profile page and on to where customers are already interacting.

Here are three effective ways to do so:

Link to your Page Everywhere

Now while this tends to be scary, as not all customers are always “happy” with what you did for them, the potential benefits tend to outweigh the bad. First, channeling your customers to one location, by linking to your page on your website, email signature, and everywhere possible, to weigh in on your company allows you to control what is being said and take steps to fix and respond to it. This is something that word of mouth and the thousands of other outlets do not give you the option of doing.

Second, this approach also allows you to connect with the customers where they are at. Most active Facebook users spend at least 45 minutes a day on Facebook, if they are a fan of your business that can potentially give you a 45 minute window where the customer can see your status update and remember they needed to purchase something from you.

Create Other Pages

This is something many businesses tend to overlook, but can be an extremely helpful marketing tactic. Say you are a marketer for Pringles, you could create a fan page such as “help this Pringle chip get more fans then Miley Cyrus” (yes this was already done but it wasn’t done by Pringles). This is something that is easy to market as people like to fan interesting pages more then they like to fan the Pringles page itself.

With some simple marketing and link building you could have a page, that you are the admin of, which has thousands of fans that can also be potential customers. These fans can then be leveraged however you desire. The possibilities are endless.

Run Promotions

Let’s face it, people love free. You are always going to have an easier time getting fans if they have something to benefit from doing it. Say you sell a blue widget, you could post a video that says “Become a fan on Facebook and one lucky fan will win a blue widget when we do our drawing next week”.

Additionally, you could leverage potential fans by telling them that if they have friends that are also our fan they will win a blue widget as well (up to five friends). That way when someone becomes a fan of your site they will tell others to be a fan as well so if one wins they all benefit. Obviously you are out the price of the widget but you have to ask yourself isn’t this worth the cost of having committed fans that follow your pages? Carls Jr does this really well by letting their fans spin a wheel then giving them something free (I did this and got a free six dollar burger).

These are merely a few examples of ways you can market your social media pages without doing anything on the page itself. Remember optimization and good posts are important, but really the only thing stopping you from engaging with more fans is your own creative ability.

Old Spice Guy

Pepsi and Old Spice have something small businesses don’t: a lot of money and people. But the competitive landscape has changed. Numerous small companies have capitalized on using social media to increase sales, brand awareness and followers. Will it Blend to date has 117,105,290 YouTube hits. Ramon Deleon of Domino’s Pizza Chicago received great press and has a great niche with college students in the local area and there are countless more success stories.

The truth is though, that most campaigns don’t go “viral”. Not to say they can’t, it’s just rare – so don’t bet on them. Instead, depend on a strategy. Here are a few tips to develop a social media strategy for your small business:

Listen, Engage, provide Value to a Niche and find the Influencers. Social media is built on a foundation of trust and interactivity. If well strategized and executed effectively it can have great outcomes.

Listen

You have two ears and one mouth for a reason. This is an integral part of a social media strategy because you need to address raving fans, competitors and unhappy customers alike. Think of it this way, you wouldn’t walk into a group of people having a conversation and blurb “Hi my name is John Doe and this is my company!!!” An alternative approach would be to approach the group, listen to the conversation and if you have value to provide, politely add it.

Engage

This is the fun part. Don’t be afraid to communicate with people. Start commenting on blogs,
re-tweeting quality information and participating in a community related to your company. Use the 80:20 ratio. 80% of the time you’re commenting, re-tweeting, listening and giving praise, genuinely of course. The last 20% you can give a shout out about your company. “Check us out on Facebook!”

Value

Your customers have literally millions of options when surfing the web, why is it that they would spend their precious time on your blog, Facebook page or Twitter profile? Are you creating funny, engaging, incentivized content? You need frequent, high quality and niche focused content.

Niche

You can’t be something to everyone and you’re facing a lot of competition for a customer’s time. What will make them come to your site, Twitter account or Facebook page? Set specific goals and objectives to provide content to a specific niche.

Influencers

At the end of the day, behind every social network are people interacting. There are certain people who have large networks and are trusted individuals. Your job is to find these people in your niche start a conversation and develop a relationship. Because, if they like you and you’re product, they’ll pass it onto a network that already trusts their opinion.

Here are 10 reasons why Twitter is most likely going to fail in the next few years:

1. Lack of Use

None of my friends tweet, preferring instead to use Facebook. When I see that I’m one of the few teenagers using Twitter, in a technologically adept school, it makes me realize just how unpopular Twitter is in our age group. Maybe it’s more popular in different demographics? While searching I came across a report on Mashable showing that only 21% of Twitter users are active. Not only that, 34% of the total amount of users have never even tweeted, while a whopping 73% have tweeted less than 10 times. It begs the question: who really does use Twitter?

2. Poor Revenues

Twitter only recently came up with a way to make money, Promoted Tweets. The system allows advertisers to display promoted tweets in search results and timelines.

The problem is that this revenue system could only work as long as Twitter users are very active. However, as previously stated, only a small percentage of users are active. In other words, this revenue system will be highly ineffective as Twitter slows down.

3. Loss of Interest

Novelty factor was a big portion of Twitter’s success. The incredible growth rate proved just that. As the novelty of Twitter wears out, less and less people are going to stick with it.

4. Bots and Spam

One of my biggest problems with Twitter has been spam. 24% of tweets have been created by “spammy” bots. When I look at my Twitter account, it seems that almost 90% of my timeline is filled with spam. Why would anyone want to continue using a service with that much junk mail?

5. Competition

One word, Facebook. Facebook is the social media behemoth of today and possibly tomorrow. As long as Facebook stays that way, Twitter will never take its place.

6. 3rd Parties

Twitter is too simple and requires too many third party services in order to do anything clever. This has led to the growth of Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, TwitterCounter, Twitter Karma, TweepML and so many other services. This is asking too much of users and most users will not want to do this.

7. The Next Fad

As with most social media networks, competition will take users elsewhere. Even Facebook may be replaced one day, just as Myspace was. It may happen sooner rather than later with Twitter due to lack of interest and loss of users.

8. Fail Whale

I keep thinking, I’m going to have make an oath that I’ll quit Twitter if I see the Fail Whale one more time. For those of you that don’t know what I’m referring to, the Fail Whale is the image that shows up when Twitter is down. About every other time I visit Twitter, the site is down.

9. Lack of Purpose

Honestly, do you understand what Twitter is about? I don’t at all and highly doubt that I’m alone. That same Mashable’s report actually dealt with this issue. 87% of Americans are aware of Twitter but only 7% use it, which shows that a huge number of people don’t understand it.

10. Security Issues

There are potentially major security risks associated with Twitter and as those risks become exploited over time, the brand will become less and less appealing to most people. Recently, major figures have had their accounts hacked, and spammers continually make Twitter unsafe.

The Fad

A conversation about social media is never complete without someone mentioning Digg or Stumbleupon. Everyone’s eyes quickly glaze over with the sheer boredom of talking about the normal social viral tactics and pie-in-the-sky techniques. The normal ideas are tossed around, the normal thoughts about viral marketing and social traffic are chewed on, and then we all go back to our lives. These conversations are commonplace around the our office, and often go just how I described. For a digital marketing agency, we’re pretty close-minded about the concept of social media marketing (mostly because it is incompatible with our clients’ needs) and that’s just the way it is.

This doesn’t stop our own private experimentation, however, and the current craze sweeping our office is indeed a social application called Foursquare.The office already has a number of adherents and our recent social media conversations have all taken a decidedly hopeful outlook for the the future of this social app, so it’s time to share.

The Concept

The concept of Foursquare, for those uninitiated, is simple. You download the Foursquare app to your phone. Then, when  you go anywhere, you ‘check in’ at that location via your phone. The app analyzes your location and offers you a list of choices to check in at, or you can search for your current location yourself. The check-in can be synced to your Facebook wall, so the post automatically tells the world where you are. Checking in earns users points and badges that can be unlocked by a certain number of check-ins or check-ins in certain locations. Extra points can be earned by traveling to different or new locations and checking in more times in a single day.

The key additional feature of this app, however, is the ‘Mayor’ feature. If you check in the most times at a single location, you are declared the ‘mayor’ of that location. A few companies have already started taking advantage of this mayor feature by offering discounts to their mayors in collaboration with Foursquare. In recent weeks, Starbucks has made major headlines by offering a $1 discount on their frappuccinos to the ‘Mayors’ of their respective locations. When you check-in at any given location, if a Starbucks is nearby, a little pop-up informs you of the location of the Starbucks and the nature of the promotion.

We have already seen, through the usage of Twitter and Facebook status updates, that social media users love talking about themselves. They love talking about what they’re doing, what they’re eating, and where they are. They already do it for no incentive whatsoever. Now imagine what they’ll do if they can earn discounts or prizes to go to a single location and check in on a mobile app-something they’re already inclined to do via Twitter and Facebook!

But Wait…There’s More

If that isn’t enough fun, you also have the option of adding a tip or bit of information about a location. It’s like having a mini-Yelp on my phone! Case in point from this weekend in urban Atlanta: I walked to a Baskin-Robbins for an ice cream cone. I checked in on Foursquare. Seconds later, a pop-up informed me that there was a Starbucks around the corner willing to give me a discount on a frappuccino. After I successfully checked into Baskin-Robbins, I was able to scan some tips for that B-R location, tips which lauded the clean bathrooms and recommended Liz the cashier to make inordinately large ice cream cones. I was entertained, enticed and informed, all in one step. What a fantastic concept!

The Call to Action

Foursquare has grown quickly since its inception in March of this year and already boasts over half a million users and allows check-in from any location worldwide. The company is currently being pursued by Yahoo and very large sums of money are being mentioned. This service is about to go places fast.

If you own a small business, a restaurant, bar, nightclub, hardware store, whatever, now is the time to register your business on Foursquare and think about some kind of promotion you could offer. An ongoing prize for the mayor, sure. How about a coupon for every customer that checks in while in your store and shares it to their Facebook? Think of the word-of-mouth buzz this could generate for a new restaurant or bar.

Any ideas or thoughts? Feel free to share them below.

Read what entrepreneurs are saying

Follow successful entrepreneurs and pay attention to what they are saying. Check out what they share, like blog posts, articles, books, and other information. You’ll find valuable learning resources in the tweets shared by entrepreneurs as well as their links. Here are a few lists of entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter: altgate, Twibes, Listorious, TweepML.

Keep an ear to the ground for opportunities

Twitter can help you find out about opportunities for learning and growing as an entrepreneur before anyone else. Pay attention to Twitter to be among the first to know about webinars, partnerships, networking events, and other opportunities that can open doors to learning and developing as an entrepreneur.

Expose yourself to inspiration

Twitter is a great place to get inspired to do great things. Follow people that are doing something exciting in business, and you’ll find yourself inspired to make something happen yourself.

Read news

You can use Twitter as a news source to find out about events and happenings as they come about. You’ll also be able to use Twitter to learn about websites and conferences, so you’re always in the loop.

Find a mentor

Use Twitter to find a mentor that can help you in your entrepreneurial journey. Follow entrepreneurs and businesspeople that you look up to, and start relationships with them to find the perfect mentor for you.

Network

In addition to finding a mentor, you can find helpful contacts as well. Connect with people who can help you learn more about becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Participate in chats

The Twitter community features regularly scheduled chats that are great for entrepreneurs. Check out tags for whatever you’re interested in, like #sba or #smallbusiness, to find out how to get in.

Take notes

Use Twitter to write down ideas and concepts you want to explore. You can also ask questions to your followers, and get insight from the entrepreneurial community.

With the help of Twitter and its users, you can get a healthy entrepreneurial education. Pay attention, interact, and be a part of the community to learn everything you can about entrepreneurship from Twitter.

Please share your thoughts, ideas and suggestions.

Personally, I’m not into social gaming and can’t really relate to the idea of spending money to buy a virtual tractor on Farmville. However, the millions of players spending their hard earned money on games like Farmville, Mafia Wars and CafeWorld is something you can’t ignore. Zynga, the maker of the most successful social games, is now valued at over $5 billion.

What’s interesting is that middle-aged women are the primary social gamers. Over 55% of social gamers are women with an average age of 43. Only 6% of the online social gamers are under the age of 21. From all those social media gamers, about a quarter end up spending real money. So it’s not me and my 16-year-old friends that are the primary players. The demographic is very different from the traditional video and online gamer player. While I can’t relate to those games, I am intrigued by the potential business opportunities.

Zynga is making over $100 million a year, purely from gamers who are paying for upgrades within these free social media games. Not long ago, a kid raked over $1,400 of debt on Farmville within two weeks, showing just how addictive these games can be.

I wonder, however, if in a year or two from now whether people will still buy guns on Mafia Wars and virtual seeds on Farmville? And if not, will there be other blockbuster social media games to replace them?

I leave you with this: Is this a brand new industry with a lot of great opportunities for entrepreneurs or is it a phenomenon that will quickly fade out?

Let me know what you think.

If you are going to start a business, you need to invest in it. Like a tattoo, if you invest in the cheapest place, not only are you getting a tattoo that may have been inked incorrectly and looks horrible in 10 years, but you also may risk a serious infection. A business needs both time and money to thrive.

The problem is that there is a lot of information online that can be quite confusing to people trying to build an online presence. Side Note: As a web designer, the majority of small business owners I have talked with are intimidated by this information and have settled into the mentality that just having a social network handle will suffice because of all the dollar signs of all these services.

If you are unsure of what to do, there are plenty of people in the social network communities that are quite trustworthy enough to give advice on who to host your site with, who is an affordable designer than charges decently, and even how you can optimize your site up properly.

Social networks are merely a place that you can share your information, not create a main hub for your business. You need something that will give you that control. Your website will be the place you want people to go to and buy what you are trying to sell the masses. In the case of some people, it may not even be selling a product, but merely asking people to come and read what you have to say.

That is quite alright if you have a site that is totally free, or even just has some third-party advertisements. However, when you spread that word, you are essentially sharing your content in hopes that it will be read – you are selling your words.

So, if you have a business and you just have a social network handle, you are missing a few steps. Even if you have just come online, you probably should be conducting test groups to find out what your potential customers might like. You can effectively do this with a website where you lead them from your social networks and onto your business for feedback.

Are you still unsure if your business needs a website? For those who already have businesses and social network handles, what advice can you give to those who are still timid about properly branding themselves online?

Here are the downsides of Twitter’s newly designed home page:

Overall

The new homepage doesn’t stand out enough like the last one, has no main focus, is too dynamic, and doesn’t focus enough on recurring users.

Top Tweets

Just like the last home page in which Justin Bieber was some how always the most trended topic, the top tweets are still only about Bieber. Also it’s too dynamic combined with the trending topics which makes the home page confusing.

Trending Topics

The “Trending Topics” along with the “Top Tweets” which rotate in two different directions could easily confuse someone on Twitter for the first time. Not only that, when you mouse over a topic, a pointless black bubble pops up with absolutely no purpose.

New to Twitter

The “New to Twitter” capsule seems to scream out that it should be placed at the same height as “Top Tweets”, it simply looks out of place. The focus on new users is way more apparent on this home page as opposed to the last one, in which there was merely a large yellow sign up button. I though preferred the last design’s sign up button because it was clean and didn’t use too much of Twitter’s valuable home page.

Sign In

The first time I visited the new home page it took me three minutes to locate the sign in button. Yes it’s the same style and placement but now it blends in to the background and is crunched up behind the “New to Twitter.”

Are you a fan of Twitter’s newly designed home page? Or not?

This is a guest post I wrote for Inspired Magazine. To see it there, click here.

Be on the lookout for:

Mashable

Mashable is the social media blog behemoth, one of the top 10 blogs on the web with over 2.4 million followers. It is what it says: “an online guide to social media.”

Social Media Examiner

“Your guide to the social media jungle” provides some of the best content out there on social media. It’s also the organizer of the Social Media Success Summit 2010 featuring well-known speakers, Guy Kawasaki, Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan and more.

Chris Brogan

One of the most famous social networking experts, Chris Brogan, explores the use of social media and social networking tools, as well as helping individuals work more effeciently. If you’re looking for a blogger who knows what he’s talking about, it’s Chris Brogan.

Twitip

Although this blog doesn’t focus on social media as a whole,  it’s the best source for Twitter tips. Darren Rowse runs this impressive multi-authored Twitter blog.

Kikolani

One of the top 10 social media blogs, Kikolani, provides priceless content on not only social media but also blogging tips.

Brian Solis

Brian Solis is one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. After reading just one post it’s evident just how knowledgeable he is in the social media expertise.

The Social Media Marketing Blog

This blog is run by Scott Monty the head of social media for Ford. This is his personal blog, where he shares his “perspectives on social media – the convergence of marketing, advertising and PR on the Web – for marketers, agencies, the enterprise and the individual.”

SocialMedia.biz

J.D. Lasica runs this well-presented news site and podcast about social media, Web 2.0, democratic media and the revolution in user-created content. It tracks news about Facebook and other social networks and Web 2.0 sites.

RotorBlog

RotorBlog provides the latest Web 2.0, social networking and online communication news. It’s one of the most popular sources of information for people using the Internet to communicate.

Britopian

In this easy-to-read, social media blog maintained by Michael Brito, you will find insights into the social web and real-time community engagement.

Feel free to leave suggestions and comments.