How To Handle Social Media Overload in the Information Age

Social media. We all want it. We all need it. It’s gotten so bad that folks are being treated for being addicted to the social media sites such as Facebook. In fact, you can make an 80 hour week living out of just tracking developments in the social media world. It’s, for some, actually a dream job to just follow and report the news, but for those of us who will have to use these services to our advantage, it can be a headache to deal with 10s of new social media sites every day.

One mistake that small businesses (and bloggers) make is trying to be active on all these sites. They want to be on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Delicious. But they also want to have presence on Weblo and 2nd Life. Here is the thing. You can’t possibly be on all these sites and be successful. It’s just not healthy for business.

Social media should be treated as a tool that helps you drive traffic to your site. If you don’t have the product (or content) to offer your visitors, you are better off looking for a real job. Also, social media should  be treated as a business process. You should evaluate if it is a core activity. For most real businesses, social media is not a core competency, which means you are better off outsourcing the process than dealing with it on your own.

But the moral of story is this. If you want to achieve success with the social media, you should focus on a couple of sites and try your best to increase your presence and engagement with others. You can’t be everywhere (I wish it was possible but it’s just not). Focus on what matters the most. Being involved in too many social communities can serve a distraction for you and your blog. I guess Seth Godin said it the best.