Six ideas to beat the social media time tornado
Jul 9th
My friend Joshua Miller was inspired by my blogs posts on social media exhaustion in two ways: He committed to take a hike in the mountains, and he sent me the following post from Abhijeet Mukherjee. Here’s an excerpt from Mr. Mukherjee’s insightful post on dealing with social media exhaustion:
The truth is that you need information. Avoiding reading feeds or logging into Facebook isn’t the solution to beating social media exhaustion. You need to filter and use information effectively. And that can only happen when you are more systematic in your approach towards dealing with the plethora of information you get everyday. Here are six tips to help you get started.
1. Know what’s causing the overload. Most people check emails 10 times every day without realizing that it is a part of the information overload they are facing. Analyze your work day and decide on the activities which are essential and the ones which you could profit from doing less. For different people, it could be different things. It could be Twitter for you and RSS feeds for someone else.
2. Tame your email. A lot of us are addicted to checking email every 10 minutes. I was once too. Here’s a tip – if you get less than 50 emails per day then check it three times per day and allot 20 minutes to each of those time slots. If you check emails every 10-20 mins, you’ll respond to each in some exaggerated fashion. If you check three times a day, and you need to process 10-15 emails at a time and necessity will force you to find a way to handle them each very quickly. Those who get more than 50 emails per day, set up auto-forward rule or train your virtual assistant. Seriously, if you are someone who gets more than 50 emails per day, you need to start looking for an assistant to handle them.
3. Contain RSS feeds. The main intent behind the invention of RSS was to let people have access to information in one place and save them time. However, too many feeds can easily turn into a source of information overload. When it comes to managing RSS feeds, prioritization is the key. Here are 8 useful tips to manage and avoid RSS overload. If you are a Google Reader user like me then here are some more tips to make you more productive while using it.
4. Set time frames. Use a timer — it’s really easy to lose track of time when you get sucked into one of the myriad sources of information on the net. It happens to me when I am watching YouTube videos. I’ll vow to do it for 10 minutes and end up spending an hour. Sound familiar? Set firm time frames for work and play and use a timer. It could be a physical device or software like this one.
5. Avoid immediacy. It’s easy to get distracted by a random source of information like a Twitter message, breaking news, or an excellent article we come across. These things tempt us to give them immediate attention. And that’s what we need to avoid. Learn to save it for later.
6. Don’t suck up every source. Filtering information sources is an important step toward beating information overload. Identify the type of information you enjoy and associate one major source with it. For example, I have stopped reading newspapers and watching news channels. I have identified certain sources on the Internet where I read all the news I want. Get the picture?
Have some other great tips to deal with information overload ? Let’s hear them in the comments.
Put one in the loser column for Mashable
Jul 8th
Yesterday there was an article on Mashable that just makes me angry.
Under the title “What Click-Through Rate Can You Expect From Twitter?,” Darren Barefoot uses a survey sample of 60 people WHO FOLLOW HIM to extrapolate that you can reasonably expect a click-through rate of 2.8%.
Forget confounding factors like spammers among your followers, re-tweeting, time of day, or the fact that the finale of “Lost” was on TV, if you have an eighth-grade education you would know this study is HOOOEY. Darren’s “reporting” breaks every rule of statistical validity and journalistic responsibility.
Worse, for this to appear in a forum like Mashable, which I love and highly respect, it’s irresponsible.
Here’s why. This article will now become part of the faux-fact lore of social media. Many people will only remember they saw this number and report it as fact.
It’s already happening: There were 42 comments following the article. Only one of them took Barefoot to task for reporting shoddy statistics. Most of the comments were along the lines of “Great information!” and “Interesting stats, thanks for sharing.”
The Mashable article had been tweeted 270 times, and assuredly re-tweeted many times more than that. Here’s a typical tweet: “Awesome article on Twitter click-thru rates …”
No. It’s not. But that’s the blessing and the curse of viral marketing. The manure gets spread just as evenly as the seeds.
Folks, please remember to use your head on this stuff. Don’t get caught up in the hype machine, and by all means help keep the airwaves clean of garbage like this.
It’s time for digital de-tox
Jul 7th
Smoky Mountains National Park — The site of my digital de-toxification!
Yesterday I commented on the increasing time commitments and frustrations of social media maintenance. To get released from the daily digital tornado, I went cold turkey — escape to the mountains without wireless service, computer or cell phone.
It was tough to get out of town. Calls, deadlines, and commitments to “get to it Monday.” Finally I headed to the mountains … with the cell phone in my suitcase.
For the entire first day I was tired, irritable and twitchy. I’m used to filling every available minute with email and Internet updates and I nervously reached for an iPhone that wasn’t there. Instead, I pulled out a book. Napped. Took a hike. Sat quietly by a pristine mountain lake.
By day two I was markedly more relaxed (isn’t “markedly” a grand word for somebody named “Mark?”). It was begnning to sink in just how much I needed to get away. I found myself regretting that I would soon be back in civilization. It was a relief to break away from the pummeling emails, alerts and requests.
I have a lot to think about. By filling spare time with constant digital stimulus/response, am I efficient or am I a junkie?
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on how rapid-fire stimulation is re-wiring our youth. How is it affecting me? Am I built for this? Isn’t our DNA wired for hunting and gathering more than continuous text messaging?
In the past six months, time in front of the computer screen has doubled as I attend to my “regular job” AND new demands from social media … which is now PART of my regular job as a marketer, business leader and teacher. How do I adjust to this fact of life and still maintain balance?
Is anybody else starting to feel consumed by the opportunities, commitments and frustrations of social media? How are you dealing with it? What tools are you using to automate, simplify and cope?
There is almost no discussion on this topic on the airwaves. We should talk about it. And by the way, I’m glad you’re here. : )
Social media exhaustion
Jul 5th
I take my first sip of fresh-brewed coffee and sit down in front of my computer for my 15 minutes of morning social media updating.
Blog reader. Let’s see what happened over the weekend … 328 new relevant articles. Where to even begin? I don’t.
On to Blogger. Need to finish an article, but when I add a photograph, all the spacing between paragraphs goes wacky, like soldiers breaking ranks. Damn. How many times have I formatted this thing?
Check Twitter. Ten new followers. Cool. Wait … nine of the avatars are people offering to help me get rich quick. Block … block … ummm … why are these folks still showing up on my list? Dreaded Twitter “whale of death” plops itself down in the middle of my screen. Too much traffic. Twitter down for the count.
Linked-in … 398 new discussions on the In eMarketing Forum. I can’t begin to wade through the snake oil to see if something meaningful is hiding in there.
Forget it. Go to email. 112 messages overnight. Quick scan shows:
Twelve e-newsletters
Eleven free social media webinars
Ten spammers
Nine blog comments to be moderated
Seven tweet-ups
Six Google alerts
Five new Linked-In requests
Four industry alerts
Three Facebook friend requests
Two news alerts
… and a partridge in a pear tree.
Social media has hijacked my morning. This new “free” channel is soaking up something more precious than money – time. I feel it sucking me under.
Some pundits claim you can manage a social media lifestyle in 15-30 minutes a day, but I don’t know how you can effectively participate in even a modest global conversation in that timeframe.
Help! How are you dealing with the increasing time requirements of social media? What are you doing to discipline yourself while providing meaningful engagement?
Tomorrow: A cure for social media exhaustion — digital de-tox?
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