CommuniKate: Social Media Musings – KateDickman.com CommuniKATE: Social Media & Other Musings

Social Media & Time

While I actively promote social media as a means of social interaction, marketing and more, I also understand that you need one thing to be truly active in this space: time. As they say, time is money and keeping up with all the sites you've signed up for can be tedious and demanding. Not only do I have several sites to keep up with, but even this blog is hard for me to update as often as I'd like. Oftentimes I figure that since blog posts will be out there for the world to see, must like newspapers in print - we must make them worthy of being read, so bare with me here. I'm not sure this is "blog worthy" but it's something I'm noticing as of late. Despite my being in this industry, I'm having a hard time doing what I pretty much preach about to others. Hmm, not good.

There are hundreds of social sites out there and while I'm signed up for many, I will admit that the one issue I have is the time to spend keeping up with all of them. While I actively use Facebook on a daily basis, where do I find the time to stay in tune with Twitter, Friend Feed, Seesmic, LinkedIn, CafeMom, Brightkite, Plurk, Digg, StumbleUpon, Flickr, Ping.fm, and more? Each site has their own unique capabilities and can be extremely beneficial but it's mind boggling to be a part of so many of them! To have a profile that is barely active is (to me) worse than having no profile at all. Why be on a site if you cannot put some time into it? I hate to think that there is a number of profiles I've started up laying around abandoned on the web due to my lack of time but after seeing several topics on this subject, none have really led to a solution for me.

The average person is not in social media (as their career) but with the ever growing pressure to be on such networks for social and business purposes, which ones do they choose and how do they find the time between family and work to be active participants? With new ones popping up each day, do we ignore them and give them no love due to "oversaturation" of the social media market despite the possible innovative functionality they may possess? More importantly, for those IN the industry, where do they find the time around client work to keep up their online personalities while not sacrificing the time that should be spent doing other things?

I remember the days when Friendster existed... then Myspace... then Facebook. Now it's a social media frenzy and if you're just sitting on the sidelines and not participating, you're as good as dead it seems. What's a girl to do? It seems in order to be "in the know" and to be a part of "social media", you have to be on every big well-known site but is this true? Is it better to enjoy the little things in life off the web and spend less time online thus damaging your credibility as a "social media expert"? Or being online and "connected" every second of nearly every day while losing your credibility as a mom or a normal human being. When venturing out and seeing something interesting but not photo-worthy to most, I will often capture a picture and upload it to Brightkite. Those around me cannot understand why the iPhone has to be connected constantly and why moments have to be interrupted by taking out the few minutes to upload, write a caption and Tweet about a damn subject or what is going on. Sometimes I snap back into reality and realize that this social media bubble many of us are in and are pressured to be more a part of, is both exceedingly time-consuming and unrealistic. Social media = fantastic. Social media = the wave of the future. I understand this, respect this and love the industry but am not as concerned as others to be visible on every single site for the sake of looking bigger, better and more knowledgeable on the subject. However, in ways I cannot help but sometimes wonder how I can find the time to do more on these sites and keep up with as many (like others do).

Where do you find the time to be human or to do activities in the real world? If we're tweeting every moment of our lives, brightkiting a photo each second and then updating the status on every site, is this real life? What's more important? Online or offline?

Many say social media enhances offline activities - ie business networking/opportunities, like-minded meetups etc. While I believe it does and use it for those purposes myself, I can't help but find it a tad difficult to keep up with it all these days. Those who are constantly connected have to remember that time is precious and irreplaceable. I know I have to remind myself that social media is complementary but certainly should not replace the valuable time you should keep offline. You should too. Social media & time, where do you draw the line and where do you find the time?