Staying Sane in Social Media

Yesterday I had the privilege of being a panelist for the first Social Media Breakfast Fort Wayne.

We had a huge variety of people attending and each of us on the panel learned something too!

A few hours later, a young lady who is active in Social Media, posted on her blog, that she needed help because now she discovered a whole bunch more tools and sites, and it sounded like she was feeling overwhelmed.

So, I responded:

There are more tools out there than any one person needs, if they want to include sleep as a regular (every 24 hours) activity.

So, take a moment and look at the big picture.

Not, “what is the best way to use social media and manage all of it?”

I mean the Really BIG Picture.

What are you trying to do overall? What will success look like? It it’s 2000 followers on Twitter, that in itself is too shallow of a goal. If you want to increase the awareness of ___________ or promote an upcoming event for ____________, then you are now looking at the Big Picture.

Once you have a definition of success, then you can play with the tools that might help you get there. Social Media (Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, You Tube, etc, are just tools, and nothing else.)

What I’m saying is, you don’t have to do it all. You will drive yourself crazy and burn out. You’ll either end up hating it and quitting, or others will start hating you because of your compulsions!

And these words are coming from a guy who posts 50+ times per week on blogs, and tweets 30+ times a day.

Here’s my simple advice. Don’t worry about the analytics. Use the social media platforms that others (the people you want to reach) are using so they can find you.

My personal experience is to post on blogs, promote with links and interact on Twitter, Facebook and Linked In.

And these days my favorite tool is Tweetdeck on my laptop for posting on those three.

Click here to read her original blog post.