By Dannielle Cresp

I love social media for how it’s grown my business and brought new friends and acquaintances into my life. But, there’s no denying that without some organisation, it can take over your life. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to find that balance between time spent on social media and time spent away from it now that it’s such a big part of many of our lives and businesses.

Here are 5 things I’ve found that work for me:

• Set a time limit - know how and when you’re going to allocate your time to social media and stick to it.
• Just log out - as difficult as it is, I’ve taken to logging right out of social media sites so that I’m less tempted to just open the browser for ‘a moment’ and get lost in there.
• Know why you’re logging on - if it’s for fun, or if it’s for your business - that’s cool, just be honest and know why you’re on there and spend the time accordingly. I’ve found I spend less time checking out of habit now I think about why I’m checking each site.
• Set a goal to work towards - I’ve found that setting a follower goal or looking at the engagement of my followers when it comes to my business and my projects helps me to see the value of spending time there.
• Delete the app - this one may be extreme, but if you find that the apps are distracting you from doing your to do list or from creating something amazing, consider deleting the apps during the week or only logging on when at the computer. It’s amazing what I’ve achieved now I’m not constantly waiting for the facebook app to load.

Some days are tougher than others to stay on top of this, but I’m loving having just that little more time for fun projects and not feeling that sense of guilt when I do log on to catch up with friends. I hope they are helpful to you too.

Dannielle is a blogger, serial organiser and passionate traveller. She has a secret love of 90s teen movies and can often be found on Twitter. In 2013, Dannielle packed up her life in Melbourne into one suitcase and moved to Canada to make her crazy dream of a more adventurous life happen. But she quickly found the inspiration she was searching for was in Melbourne and has recently returned home. You can find out more on her blog.