Digital Cleanse Day 16:
Establish Your Response Time
Establishing your response time is key to a sane digital life. As you’re reading a post in my digital cleanse series, I think it’s safe to assume you want more calm than chaos.
Let’s say you have four active social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. In addition to posting your own content, you’ll need to reply and follow up with your friends, fans, and followers. In order to do that effectively, you need to have a system for monitoring mentions and replies as well as a firm grasp on your response time.
Monitoring social media mentions and replies
Everyone has their own preferences for monitoring social accounts. Some keep four active tabs open in a browser, one for each social network. Others use a social media dashboard such as AgoraPulse or Hootsuite. Still others prefer to have mobile apps on their home screens and notifications turned on. (Those folks should read my earlier digital cleanse post – turn off notifications.) Whatever your preference, be consistent about monitoring social media. Schedule time in your calendar if that helps you.
Response time: How fast is fast enough?
How fast you reply may depend on whether you are dealing with a personal interaction or a business response. Personal interactions can happen in your leisure time or during your bus commute. Friends and family understand that you may be at work and unavailable much of the day. Business responses are different. In some cases, the client expects an instant reply. In other cases, you’ve got a bit of time but how fast is fast enough?
If you respond instantly, you must have a workflow that can tolerate constant interruptions. Is your topic time sensitive? Flight delays and traffic updates are only useful in real time.
If you respond within a few hours, this may be perfectly reasonable to your clients. They know you’re busy working for them (or other clients) and they want you to be focused and doing a great job.
If you respond within a day, I think that’s the outside limit for an acceptable response for business purposes. Respond within one business day, if that makes sense for your business.
If you respond within a week, your client may be glad to hear from you but they won’t feel particularly special or important. Is that the kind of relationship you want to cultivate?
If you only respond when you remember to check, when you have time, or when you feel like it, I suggest you need to rethink being in business. Looking after your customers has to be a priority.
Worst of all is no response at all. How does that make your clients feel? Will they want to do business with you? Of course not. You are at risk of losing a customer to a competitor.
What’s your response time going to be?
I encourage you to make a decision on your response time and be consistent with it. Fans and followers will grow accustomed to hearing from you at certain intervals. In my own work, I choose to respond within a few hours. Each weekday, I schedule social media time for early morning, just after lunch and evening. At minimum, I’ll respond three times a day. Admittedly, weekend response times are less structured as I integrate my work into family time.
Respond to everything?
One last thing: Social media is about conversation and building relationships. It’s about being present and part of what’s happening. Respond to as many people as you can. And know that it’s okay when the conversation fizzles out. Face-to-face conversations do that, too.
More on the 30-day #digitalcleanse tomorrow. Hope to see you then!
(If you missed yesterday’s installment, take a couple extra minutes to explore Banish Reply All.)
Note: This post was updated May 15, 2020.