Social Media: How much is too much?

June 27, 6:44 PMSocial Media ExaminerCheryl Phillips

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You love Twitter, spend hours on Facebook and join every social network that you find out about. You’re connected. You have “friends” all over the place. Quite possibly you are so connected that you can’t remember what sites you signed up for, never mind your password.

In my humble opinion, it is quite possible to be overly connected. You appear on so many social networking sites that you are spread a bit too thin. How can you possibly contribute anything of value when you are signed up for every site on the Internet? How can you streamline this?
 
It is a combination of the process of elimination and self control. In real life you cannot be involved in thirty different clubs, work and quite possibly take care of a family. The same goes for social networking. You have to learn to pick and choose the sites that give you the best possible networking abilities instead of just being everywhere at once and contributing nothing. Who will notice you if you just have a bio on a site but have no time to contribute? Absolutely no one.
 
I keep hearing about this new term “adding value”. This truly applies to social networking. If you join Twitter and start building a quality group of followers, you might want to join Facebook to connect with your followers beyond the 140 word tweets. This does not mean you have to join every single social network that your followers belong to. If they are also on MySpace but you don’t have the time to update that site constantly, then why not stick with what works for you?
 
If you cannot pinpoint an actual reason to join a network, then don’t. If a friend sets up a social networking site for people with pets but you don’t own a pet, why join? Just to make your friend happy? Your contributions will be zilch. Sure, your picture looks great, but who is going to look if you are not active on the site?

Bottom line, go with what you know. Do not make the mistake of putting your face on every site just to be seen. As it is in real life, a pretty face can only take you so far. It’s what you contribute that makes good networking!