What is your personal social media tipping point?
by Kyle Flaherty on Jan.31, 2008, under Social Media
Bryan Person posted a terrific question to Twitter on Wednesday asking people how they balance work and life (check out the responses Bryan got). Very soon after that I was reading Larissa Fair’s post about the increasing influence of social media. She is right when she writes:
This is more than a cultural phenomenon, I think social media will soon become something that is integrated into our everyday life, as much as browsing the web or writing an email. As professionals, we must recognize this shift and develop our skills to stay relevant and close the gap between younger social media marketers and older PR pros.
The combination of this question and then reading the post made me think more about my current social media state and in general where we are heading in terms of our ability to process all of the different content. I believe that not only, as Larissa states, must we learn how to use all of these tools, but we must also learn how to better balance our input and output within the social media landscape.
Perhaps it is just me, but in the past few weeks I’ve found myself struggling to keep up with it all. Each day I find another blog to read, someone else to follow on Twitter, another friend on Facebook, one more social media tool to use, five more beta invites, another social media gathering (hey, I’m guilty here too). Yes, I know, you can choose not to follow/friend/subscribe/attend people/blogs/communities/events, and I do, but overall there is just a marked increase in social media content and with this enormous growth comes a needed moment to reflect on how it will be managed.
I have two questions for you before I talk tomorrow about what I’ve been doing lately to create my social media balance:
1) Have you gotten to your personal social media tipping point?
2) When you do, what do you do?
/kff
January 31st, 2008 on 11:24 am
My lessons?
Sometimes you just gotta “Mark All As Read.” The reader will be full again tomorrow - and anything that mighta’ been HUGE will be re-covered as a meme anyway.
You can be a Social Media geek without being social: I decided a long time ago that my wife & kids were the people who deserved as much of my free time as possible. That’s why I rarely attend outside events that aren’t critical. I miss out on some great camaraderie, and maybe even some potentially-lucrative relationships … but then again, I am happily married with two healthy, fairly-well-adjusted (knock wood) teenagers.
January 31st, 2008 on 11:32 am
Great comment Todd and much appreciated. You are certainly correct and one of the number one things I’ve had to let drop off are external events.
/kff
January 31st, 2008 on 12:53 pm
Thanks for linking to my roundup of answers to my question about work/life balance.
A few months ago, I was trying to attend about one social media event per week — but I found even that was usually too much. I often wrestle with balancing my enthusiasm for outside projects/meetups and the need for 1) downtime 2) quality family time.
I don’t have the magic solution here, but when I do feel overload coming on, I try and get honest with myself — do I really need to go to this meetup? do I really need to be following 300 RSS feeds? do I really need to beta-test and blog about yet another social network? — and find enough “no”s to ensure I stay sane.
January 31st, 2008 on 1:53 pm
Thanks Bryan, I think I’m down to about 2 a month at this point, seems like the right number. Also agree with the feeds and sometimes you do have to just say no!
All that being said, I’ll still see you at SMB V, without a doubt!
/kff
January 31st, 2008 on 3:08 pm
Kyle,
Thanks for linking and I’m glad that struck a chord with you. I definitely agree with your questions, I find it hard to keep up with all of the social media that is out there - and it’s my job! I think it’s both difficult and cool that we have so many ways to keep in touch and follow each other, it’s definitely overwhelming at some points.
In response to your questions:
I go back and forth on my “tipping point” - at first I tried to do everything at once, and now I just do what I can handle and what gives me the most ROI. I work to maintain my profiles wherever my networks hang out (be it Twitter or Facebook) and only attend events that fit in with my schedule or will have great value for my career. Or hey, that are really fun! I don’t go through my reader that often, and sometimes (like Todd) I just mark all as read and start anew. Social media is about relationships, and you can’t maintain “real” ones if you’re always sitting behind a computer.
January 31st, 2008 on 3:31 pm
PS - This is very timely as well:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/31/myspace_fb_comscore_drop/
February 1st, 2008 on 3:13 pm
Kyle; I have struggled on and off with this ever since I started blogging in 2005. But I do predict a backlash this year. There is only so much attention to go around out there. Someone will either streamline it, or the socnets will even out on growth. At a personal level, I protect my weekends and evenings with the family.
February 1st, 2008 on 3:49 pm
Thanks Kami, it is a struggle!!
Speaking of protecting weekends…I’m getting outta here. Thanks for stopping by!
/kff
February 3rd, 2008 on 10:35 am
[...] Yesterday we talked about the social media tipping point and what some folks do to make sure they can balance all of the content, events, beta invites and more. Well later in the day I saw a wonderful description of what I think I actually have, a Social Media Headache (SMH). I completely stole this from Daniel Johnson’s Twitter post. It was simply too perfect and I’m happy that I caught it since the one area I’ve had the most trouble keeping up with is Twitter. [...]
February 9th, 2008 on 12:53 pm
I use a feed reader called BlogBridge. It has a really smart search feature that helps me deal with the overload. It searches through my feeds for key words and phrases that are relevant to our clients and my interests. It cuts my ‘must read’ list from about 400 to 50 each day. Then, as Todd suggests, mark all as read covers it when I’m really bogged down.