Yes! You can handle your social media in 20 minutes a day

If a quick scan of your Facebook news and Twitter feed is anything but quick, help yourself by creating your version of this 20-minutes-a-day plan.

1. Divide your social media outreach into daily, weekly and monthly activities. (Daily might include Twitter and Facebook, weekly might include your blog, and monthly might be attending to other social media profiles such as LinkedIn.
2. Spend one 20 minute session a week brainstorming topics. Generating topics is a completely different mental energy than writing about those topics. Start a successful "topic brainstorming session" by reviewing the prior week's email, phone and online conversations. What current questions do clients have? Where are they missing the boat? What skills do you have that could really help them? What would save them time? What would make them feel important? 
3. Consider a brainstorming partner. When you brainstorm topics with a partner, you're forced to say things out loud. Amazingly, as you explain how you would help someone or what problems your clients are having, you come up with all kinds of stunning insights on the fly. If you're not brainstorming out loud, you're missing out on a lot of fun, juicy topics. 
4. Get a note taking device. Before you get down to the serious business of writing, play with your topics. Capture ideas about your topic in a notebook or iPad or PDA. You will be delighted at how much time and stress you eliminate from any project when you sit down to write and, instead of staring at a blank screen, you begin by reviewing your ideas. Whether you use the ideas doesn't even matter. Simply reviewing them gives you a built-in starting point.
5. Divide projects into chunks that you could actually finish in 20 minutes. Can you really research a topic, write up a blog post, find or create a visual for your post, and get it all done in 20 minutes? If not, maybe your first chunk will be to research the topic and take notes, then the second chunk could be to write a lousy first draft, or even a lousy couple of paragraphs. I promise, you will end up getting more done if you only require 20 minutes of concentrated effort at a time.
6. Put your plan into your calendar. If all you need to do is glance at your calendar (be that a paper calendar, a PDA or a computer calendar) and see what's on the daily docket, you won't waste your time and energy figuring out when you last blogged. You'll be ready with your task, your topic and your notes, and yes, you will produce targeted, effective social media in 20 minutes a day.