Sorry for the cliche, but the recent succession of snow storms in Central Ohio has inspired me to apply what I feel is an overwhelming side-effect of participating in social media — the snowball effect.
When starting out, social media is fun, engaging and exciting. But as your online social networks begin to grow, the interactions with others becomes (or should become) more frequent in both quantity and quality.
So, what happens if you can’t keep up?
I found that for the majority of my recent pregnancy and after the birth of my newest son, keeping up with my personal social networks has taken a backseat to the social networks I’m required to maintain as part of my job. At the end of the day, I just don’t have enough time or energy to participate in both work-related AND personal social media.
For me, Twitter was — and is — the hardest social media outlet for me to maintain. The frequency of entries expected is what makes Twitter so demanding. Of course, if utilized, it’s also one of the most satisfying social media mediums in which I’ve participated. To be able to instantly connect with other professionals in my field has proven invaluable to me in the past.
Facebook, on the other hand, has been the one social media avenue in which I’ve been able to continue my personal social media efforts. The problem with Facebook is that I find it difficult to make new connections with people and tend to only connect with those I already know when using the site.
LinkedIn is another important social networking site I have been failing to utilize as well I could.
And lastly, blogging. I love to blog, but lately I haven’t making time to take part in this enjoyable pastime. Hopefully this trend is changing, because I miss sharing my thoughts here. Even if my husband is probably the only one to read them besides me!
I know how important it is to maintain my professional contacts and networks, and yet I have been so pressed for time that entertaining my personal social media interests feel somewhat indulgent and nearly impossible right now.
Talk to me. What do you do to balance your family while still maintaining your personal and work-related social media involvement?
2 responses so far ↓
1 Heather Rast // Feb 10, 2010 at 3:26 am
Would love to add something pithy and intriguing here….but alas you seem to be echoing some of my own thoughts/feelings. Twitter and FB can be very rewarding in two different ways personally (as a means of expression, and as a means to learn/dialogue) and of course professionally they’re another can of worms altogether. But it can be taxing, as you suggest, b/c the nature of the platforms has us competing in a weird way to out-top ourselves with quality and insight or cleverness. Throw in blogging (like you, something I enjoy) and it’s easy to get drained. My hat’s off to those (and I can name several) who pull it off well. Brave of you to write about it! @heatherrast
2 Ron // Mar 5, 2010 at 12:13 pm
There are som plug-ins for wordpress or if you use google’s feedburner service will automatically post updates from your feedburner feed to your twitter account.
that may relieve the stress somewhat. I do temd to agree with you though, it is very hard I think to keep up with them both. I usually find myself up late at night lol
take care.
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