How to Stop Social Media Taking Over Your Day by Chris Garrett
(1) Only share what is safe to share – Once you connect to people outside your close friends and family you need to restrict the information you place in these networks. If in doubt, keep it to yourself.
(2) Observe before following.
(3) If people are taking too much of your time, drop them, and do not feel any guilt about it. There are no rules that say you have to follow everyone who follows you!
(4) Pick your venues and do not try to be active in all of them.
(5) Do not take part in time-wasting activities, such as quizzes and zombie games.
(6) Set Social Media time and log off when that time is over.
(7) Grow your network selectively and steadily – Learn how much activity you can manage.
(8) Use tools where appropriate.
Ten Causes of Social Media Meltdown by Doc Nicole Sundene
Since an “Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” according to my favorite Chinese proverb, let’s take a little look at the Top Ten Causes of Social Media Meltdown:
(1) IM Invasion – out of all the social networking options out there this one can be the most repeatedly invasive and most bloggers in need of accomplishing daily internet tasks will need to set strict boundaries for IM.
(2) Over-stumbling – it just isn’t good to spend more than an hour a day stumbling. How to use stumbleupon effectively
(3) Twittering Your Life Away – don’t Twitter your life away. Twitter tools reviews ; Five Twitter resources for bloggers; More Twitter resources
(4) Facebook Freaks Freaking You Out – This is a great way to network, strengthen your brand with a fan page and utilize Blog Networks for free advertising. It is great to find like minded individuals, and further connect with favorite blogging friends. But Facebook is also a dating site and thus a fantastic way to invite hecklers, pessimists and stalkers in to your vortex. I don’t hesitate to delete and block anyone that even slightly gives me a bad vibe on Facebook.
(5) Digging in a Vacuum – The biggest mistake I see most newbie bloggers make when they get on Digg is to submit their own content. You need a network of friends to use Digg effectively. The importance of mutual friends on Digg
(6) Digging Your Blog Away – Overdigging is the best way to seriously burn out a seasoned blogger. How to use Digg effectively
(7) Forum Attackathon – Have you ever started what you thought might be a friendly or informative discussion to promote an article, and then returned to find people completely attacking you? Yikes! Such negativity can be extremely harsh on your brand or personal reputation, and the scariest part is that it is now recorded on the internet for all of eternity. When a friendly debate turns ugly and immature it is best for your brand to just walk away.
(8) Letting Gossip Suck you Dry – gossip is a great red flag waved above the exact people you should always be out to avoid anyways.
(9) Commenting till the Cows Come Home – The most efficient system is to comment on the blogs that leave comments for you, as well as your favorite blogs within your niche. If you find yourself with nothing to say on a blog, just move on and leave a comment next time.
(10) Trying to keep up with the Joneses – the best way to keep things in a state of balance is to adopt a thorough and consistent social media system.
Related reading: Release the Awesome Power of Setting Goals
Time management tools – Page addict – firefox extension- Pageaddict is a Firefox extension that will remember how much time you spend on each web site during the day. It allows you to “tag” each site and restrict how much time you spend on sites with a given tag.
Discussion questions:
(1) Do you agree or disagree with the points Chris and Doc Nicole make?
(2) What is your strategy for effectively using the time you spend to promote your blog(s)?
(3) Have you created a social media strategy to insure that the time you spend on all social media networking sites is effectively used?
(3) Do you have any social media time management tips to share?
Related posts found in this blog:
How to be an organized blogger: Rememberthemilk
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Nicky
January 8, 2009
These are excellent straightforward tips for not only avoiding Social Media meltdown but for keeping things in perspective. It’s so easy to be sucked into Social Media fervour and quickly become overwhelmed. Good stuff.
ian in hamburg
January 8, 2009
The most effective social media time management strategy is to log off at least once a week for 24 hours. Even better… three to seven times a week. ;-)
SBA
January 9, 2009
I mostly agree with them, good common sense points (but then when we’re deep into the social media tangle we forget common sense!). I’m not as disciplined in this area as I should be, but I’m learning from earlier lost time blackouts. No time limit but I’ve decreased the amount of visits to blogs of people who add me as one of their thousand friends; comment on fewer blogs — leave a quick note sometimes in shoutbox, less formal and can start a dialog with blog owner. I’m too afraid to even start Twitter (sounds addictive) or Digging. I do love getting lost on Stumble Upon occasionally. My tip is to watch out for those SU toolbar instant messages where folks refer pages for you to review, I let them collect until I set aside time to attend to them.
Sayz Lim
January 10, 2009
It takes only 5 minutes to finish reading this post,
stumbled it (not over stumbled, LOL)
timethief
January 10, 2009
@SBA
I use twitter very infrequently to post notices of publication of posts and sometimes to chat a bit. I rarely bother with Digg as the in group there controls it. I do spend time at stumbleupon and I do the opposite of what you suggest I do the stumble referrals first. :)
timethief
January 10, 2009
@Sayz Lim
Thank you :)
Laila
January 10, 2009
Very nice tips..I did not know many..thanks for sharing!:)
timethief
January 10, 2009
@Laila
You’re welcome and if you have any tips of your own to share I’d be happy to have you comment again and post them here.
timethief
January 10, 2009
@ian in hamburg
Your tip is so right on and I love your blog too. You make me smile and sometimes even LOL :D
timethief
January 10, 2009
@Nicky
It’s so easy to be sucked into Social Media fervour and quickly become overwhelmed.
How right you are. I have been there and done that and now I’m getting over it and getting on with the things that truly matter.
m7levels
January 11, 2009
Timethreif once again I am impressed with your content. Very spot on, direct and informative. I would like permission to post your article on one of our business blogs! Let me know
timethief
January 11, 2009
@m7levels
Thanks for the offer but no thanks. If you would like to post an excerpt of my post that doesn’t exceed 50 words, correctly attributes me as the author, and links back to the full original post on this site then you have my permission. However, I will not consent to letting you republish an entire article. Obviously, doing that would be of no benefit to my blog as duplicate content leads to Google penalties. This is the link to the page where my full copyright notice is published. http://onecoolsite.wordpress.com/comments-contact/
Gabriella
December 7, 2009
Hello timetheif, I apologize but that is what I meant to do but, did not ask correctly. :) Thanks.
timethief
December 7, 2009
@Gabriella,
I’m glad you came back and saw my answer. It surprises me that some people do not read copyright pages on blogs. Perhaps they think they are all the same. Well, they aren’t and as I am a paralegal I take copyright very seriously.
JP
March 24, 2009
My advice would be if you are trying to increase your website traffic, sales or revenue, avoid social networking sites altogether. Unless you have some other reason to use them. I’m referring to sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Twitter, etc. They don’t bring targeted traffic, and can dilute the revenue you receive from networks like Google Adsense (especially if you aren’t filtering ads). And they are major time sinks.
timethief
December 7, 2009
@JP
OOPS! I missed replying to your comment. I apologize. Yes social networks are a huge time sink for sure. Worse still is that the traffic a blog gains from them produces very high bounce rates.
Margaret
December 7, 2009
timethief,
Thank you so very much for this!…. I have experienced an irrelevant commenter, who doesn’t even read my posts, but makes comments to try and build a personal network….. This person is also trying to leave similar irrelevant comments on the sites of those whom I share things with…. After reading this, I think I now have the gumption to no longer reply to such irrelevant comments….. Up to this time, I just didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings — but have come to the conclusion this person doesn’t really have any feelings or respect for others, so it’s time to drop communications.
Live and learn…
Margaret
timethief
December 7, 2009
@Margaret
Developing a social media time management strategy is important. Every day I witness other bloggers who spend hours twittering, stumbling and digging. That’s not for me. I’d also like to bring another post to your attention with regard to off-topic comments and knowing how to deal with negative comments.
Remember that every comment that appears on your blog makes a contribution to your blog’s brand. Those who attempt to “use” me and my blog by being overly familiar, and those who submit comments replete with keywords in anchor text, rather than their usernames in an attempt to divert traffic to their own commercial sites or monetized blogs will not see their will be done in my blogs. Also I do not enable those who do not play well with others and demand “freedom of speech” without accepting responsibility for their inflammatory and defamatory words. My stand is that if they want a pulpit or a soapbox upon which they can stand and abuse others, then they can get their own blog and I’ll be sure never to visit it or link to it.
Michelle
December 29, 2009
I realise this post is nearly a year old.
But I feel that the message gets more and more true as we become more comfortable with social media! I do agree with most points, but I do feel that any time “stumbling” is wasted time. With an hour you could do something much more constructive with your time.
Anyways, thanks
timethief
December 29, 2009
Hello Michelle,
Perhaps if I was an idle and bored person, without an actual every day life to lead including income earning work to do, I might be more strongly attracted to the “social media gang tag game”, but that’s not who I am and does not describe my actual situation.
I have a husband and we have our own small business. I also do contracted research and writing work, and I have hobbies and charitable club work as well. My time is precious to me. My relationships with friends and family is where I choose to invest my “free” time in.
My blogs are not monetized and do not benefit from having a high bounce rate created by ad clicking floods of one hit wonders, and I observe that this is not the case with many stumblers, who rely on affiliate income schemes and/or the flood of traffic to produce ad clickers that make them income.
I am currently considering whether or not to continue with stumbleupon. Although I have found many interesting sites on stumbleupon and that “discovery” is the model of how to use stumbleupon correctly, as opposed to forming gangs who vote up each other’s posts every day, I have noted that there are many gangs of mutual stumblers who submit and stumble, tweet, reteweet, friendfeed, Digg, reddit, blogengage, etc. each and every one of each others posts continuously.
Well, my experience is that stumbleupon can bring in many hits in a flood that amount to creating a high bounce rate that I have referred to above. I have spent hours discovering, reviewing and giving the thumbs up only to articles that I feel are deserving. I’m not inclined to become one of the “mutual” submissions gangs that pervade social media and social networks these days. The whole social network experience has become one of tacit mutual agreements to spend every day submitting and voting up their “friends” articles and it’s distasteful to me. It reminds me of schoolyard gangs. And, in essence, it amounts to gaming the system and polluting the blogopshere and internet with the same links to the same posts circulating round and round endlessly.
So I’m assessing whether I wish to be on the social media merry-go-round at all and if I do decide to stay in the playground then I will need to do some “pruning”.