What do you seek from social media? Do you know? Are you wasting time?
In a recent conversation with a friend, I asked him why he spends so many hours per day using Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other social networks. I asked him if he had achieved any considerable objectives, and whether they were personal or business objectives.
I was really asking him these things to help him consider his objectives, and to gather his opinions. After all, gaining others’ perspectives is a huge benefit of social media. My friend works for a living and counts on new business to keep a paycheck coming in. So there is presumably a business hope for gain. He admits that he has hopes that it will help him meet some future business goals, but it has thus far been unfruitful. He also is a very friendly and social person, so there is clearly a gain there. He meets a lot of cool people. I wanted to know how his gains measure up with his expectations and his goals, or if he even considered any goals, or what action he was taking to address them specifically. Without actually having a set goal, all of the greatest social life of an arena rock star will not get you there. You must know what it is that you are after in order to achieve it.
I approached this subject with my friend in part because I really wanted his honest answers of how he believed it would benefit him to be what I call a “popular information gatherer”. There are many people who do this, but seldom do they actually have an answer for their reason, and even more seldom do they actually find any benefit for all the time and energy they spend. Plus, there are a lot of services that do this, so the “service” they render of shoveling content back and forth across their networks is not a whole lot different than that friend you have who emails you jokes sixty times per day.
I believe that is it very important that if you spend a lot of time with anything, you should have a good idea why you are doing it. The reason can be anything you like, but there should be a conscious purpose for the time you spend. Otherwise, you should perhaps spend more time with your children, cleaning house, or a hobby. Time is your most precious resource, and once you use it, you cannot have it back. Spend your time well, and know why you are doing it.
For some, social networking is a hobby, and it certainly has some interesting appeal for many people. There can be many different benefits to a good social network. Social networking is great for meeting friends. Friends can help you to find customers. After all, if you are my friend, I will do my best to send people your way when they need the product or service that helps you to earn a living. Don’t you do this for your friends if given the opportunity? There are a lot of great benefits, but it seems common that I ask people what they are after and they either truly do not know or they are going about it completely wastefully.
A more serious question was in how much time my friend spends trying to be popular. Being popular is not so bad, but it can also be a bit of an addiction. For example, I know a lot of people will use Twitter to send rapid-fire messages about the funny video they just found or the amazing news article that just broke. They will monitor Digg.com, Alexa Hot URLs, Google Trends, and dozens of RSS feeds to find the coolest and latest trend and hope to be the first person to make the story popular. So this begs the question of what they are really after. A common answer is that it will help them become more recognized in rating services that rank users with various standards. If they are the “top user” in their city, state, region, or country, that is awesome! It will help more people find them and watch what they have say.
Here comes the wasteful and arrogant part. When these people do this, they often completely neglect the fact that if they are popular with knitting grandmothers, but the people they really want to reach are a completely different group, they may be wasting a whole lot of time.
The other side of this is that networking is nearly always good. Meeting the knitting grandmother is great. She may become your good friend. There is also an outside chance that she will introduce you to her daughter who is in the same field as you or is single and really right up your alley. There are many possibilities that are opened up with networking and knowing a lot of people. The possibilities are hard to count.
There must be a balance! If the popularity contest is what you are after, there is a huge likelihood that other areas of your social media hopes or expectations will suffer greatly. If all you want is to be popular without any reason, you are probably lying to yourself and others. Being popular in itself is not a meaningful goal. Being popular in order to spread a purposeful message or to meet an objective such as earning a living can make a lot more sense. Popular by itself is really pretty shallow and meaningless, don’t you think?
So, when you set out to become popular by spending hour after hour Tweeting, Digging, Facebooking, and FriendFeeding every last “useful” piece of content, why not take a look at your message and find a place for quality in the equation. If all you are doing is passing along the story you just found, perhaps consider why. What is your objective? Is it to make somebody laugh? That is fine, but how many hours are you spending, and what might you be missing during all those hours?
If you are really clever and resourceful, perhaps you may try creating some content for a change. Then, if you are really … I mean really good at it, there is a chance that the unique message you have to share can take on a quality tone over and above quantity. Best of all, it can set a tone of your own, and not just like that of the dog who drags a dead rabbit to the porch to impress their master.
