Time is a valuable resource, and that’s why it is more important than ever to manage your time wisely.

"Typically in the SMB space, people have very little resource[s], so you see people trying to get a lot done with a very small staff – maybe one person in their marketing department trying to do it all," Kim Albee, CEO of Genoo told WebProNews in a discussion at the Online Marketing Summit. "And then you look at the world today…" You’ve got social media, your website, search engine rankings, lead capturing, and all kinds of stuff to worry about.

Social media alone, as it pertains to time and productivity, has been the subject of much discussion and controversy. It’s easy to waste a lot of time using social sites, but it’s also easy to boost your productivity with them. It all depends on how you use them. As we concluded based on a recent survey, social networks don’t waste time. People do.

One viewer of the above conversation commented, "Marketing for tiny work groups is difficult, but essential. It does not matter what the product or service, marketing with follow-up must occur. Unfortunately, those of us in the smallest of businesses must think creatively and use what tools are available to make things work."

As far as social sites are concerned, look for ways to utilize specific features within the social networks that can help save you time, and focus. A couple of great examples of this are the Lists features in Twitter and Facebook, which pretty much operate the same way and serve the same function. They get your feeds organized. They reduce the noise.

Rather than just seeing what everyone you are friends with on Facebook is saying all in one flow of information (including Farmville updates, specials from restaurants you’re fans of, etc.), you can view what people from one set of people you have grouped together are saying, and focus on that to meet your needs. The same goes with Twitter (minus the Farmville updates).

Of course, productivity doesn’t begin and end with social networks, but as people (including employees) spend more and more time on these sites, it’s important to consider how effectively the sites are being used.

Some other things you can do to boost productivity and reduce time spent on everyday tasks are: utilizing browser plug-ins, organizing the way you get your news (which can be done the same way as your friends’ status updates, as Facebook recently reminded us), and using your smartphone to keep up with information when you have random breaks and downtime during the day, whether that be waiting for your food to arrive at a restaurant, waiting at the dentist’s office, or going out for a smoke.