Top 5 ways to prevent social media overload.
by Leanne Schmidt on Oct 21 at 6:00 am
Using social media is a pretty common strategy for promoting a business, but it can sometimes lead to seriously exhaustive conditions – both for you, and your audience. Fight social media fatigue with these five tips:
1. Create a plan.
Instead of getting sucked into the blogging, tweeting, commenting, Facebooking, doing a zillion things at once vortex, create a basic plan to keep your social media under control. Choose only a few tactics and write down daily and weekly actions that will keep things moving forward.
2. Track your time.
Use a time tracking tool like Toggl to see how long you spend using social media. By observing exactly where and how long you spend your time, you’ll be able to better manage your day and adjust your social media efforts based on your success. Not getting much response from LinkedIn or Foursquare? Check them weekly instead of every five seconds.
3. Save it for a rainy day.
Sometimes you’ll run out of things to talk about. To get you through these times, try to collect bits and pieces of information that inspire or motivate you. Bookmark content that you can later talk about on your blog. Create a Twitter list or RSS feed of your favourite resources. Stay in touch with individuals who inspire you and talk with them regularly.
4. Chill out dude.
Your social network can live without you from time to time. Take breaks from the internet. Relax and save some energy for interacting with real, live humans. This will give your listeners a break too. Seth Godin once said, “Once you overload the user, you train them not to pay attention. More clutter isn’t free. In fact, more clutter is a permanent shift, a desensitization to all information.”
5. Delay your reaction time.
The internet is a land of instant gratification. It’s tempting to reply to every tweet, email, comment and photo tag the minute you receive it, but you should resist or risk spontaneous social media combustion. Take your time, filter, prioritize and carry on. Batch your social media tasks into chunks rather than letting them interrupt you all day long.
How do you manage social media stress? Let us know in the comments.
Photo by Helga Weber on Flickr.
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