10 Tips For Saving Your Social Media Sanity

I’ve been around the interwebs a long time. And I’ve seen my fair share of behaviour. I’ve been caught up in the rantings of internet trolls, excited by extreme uses of social sites, overwhelmed by trying to keep up with as much as I can… and I’ve come out the other end with sanity restored. If you’re still trying to get there, here are some tips that might help:

1. DON’T FEED THE TROLLS. This is the most important for maintaining sanity. Internet trolls just seem to like to provoke people. How do you recognize them? Easy. They complain. You try and make them happy. They complain more. The cycle continues and you end up nowhere. Break the cycle. Respond once in the same forum they have. Move on.

2. Schedule, schedule, schedule. Make a social media editorial schedule (a tip I picked up from Matt Clark, @itstrue). Follow it as consistently as you can. If it takes you more than an hour to fill it out, you’re taking too much time. Schedule less tweets until you become more proficient. Speaking of scheduling, auto-schedule your tweets and updates (I use Hootsuite)! Just fill the in-between with real conversation.

3. Use the social media rule of thirds. Post one-third content from other people, one-third that’s on topic for you and one-third that’s personal.

4. Lists are your friends. Make topical lists on Twitter wherever you can. Check in on the important ones once a week and comment to people you’d like to connect more with. Don’t worry about everyone else.

5. Be selective about your interactions. Don’t worry about being everyone’s best friend. They don’t want or need you to be. Keep your focus on what you think is relevant and chances are you’ll attract similar minded people.. thus making you relevant either way. Nay-sayers? See point number 1.

6. Quality over quantity, my friend. Always. Don’t have time to spend a quality 10 minutes getting the most out of your time online? Don’t. I’m an advocate about doing as much as you can yourself, but if you must, hire somebody else to get you started. Social media and online marketing are supportive mediums. They’re also amplifiers. Positive word of mouth gets around online. So does the negative. Make sure you’ve got a solid foundation and processes to work from. Then dive in to telling everyone about it.

7. Take a day off, or a week. The interwebs will still be there when you get back. I promise. And it really won’t take you as long as you think to get back in the swing of things. Double promise.

8. Stay realistic about your expectations, whether of online results or of people. Be clear. Be direct. Be confident enough to ask for what you want. If we don’t see your one update about something, it’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we’re busy people too.

9. Set loose goals. Yep, loose. And change them often to suit your needs. The goal is progress, not perfection. Can’t keep up with 10 updates a day? Bring it down to 5. Not sure what your goals should be? Don’t let that stop you, if you’ve got the time, experiment. Sure you’ll make mistakes, but if people stop talking about social media catastrophes like BP (not to make light of the actual environmental catastrophe preceding it), surely they won’t remember yours.

10. DON’T FEED THE TROLLS. Right, I said that one already, but it’s the most important point! For real, that’ll save you hours.

You’re welcome!

Bonus: When writing blog posts, never publish your first draft without rereading several hours later, or even better, the next day. (Caveat: Unless you’re at least halfway through a bottle of wine).

The BS We Tell Ourselves

There are all these studies and criteria going on about how to use social media, how many times a day to post, what kind of content to post, measuring the ROI… blah blah blah. Yeah, blah.

There are people to whom those numbers mean something. I am not one of them. Why? Well, because part of me believes that it takes away some of the sparkle of what made whatever we’re building special to begin with. And the other part of me remembers a time when Twitter was little, and Robert Scoble talked about how he had left it for ages and ages and somehow, his follower count miraculously kept growing. WTF? Where’s the study for that one?

Call it the exception to the rule if you want. I think it’s the rule we’re not looking  at. The one that says if you’re being yourself and building something awesome, the consistency and frequency of your posts has no relevance in the end. Don’t tell that to the data people though, they might freak out and argue against it.

But think about it, if all of our energy and focus was on being ourselves instead of trying to figure out what in the world our followers, fans, community, etc. wanted, we’d be, well, exactly where we are today. But if each of us focused more on our own interests, on what we think creates value in the everyday? Frack, there’d probably be a helluva lot more Robert Scobles in the world.

Social Media, You’ve Ruined Me

I’ve developed a disdain for anyone using the term “guru” or “expert” to identify anyone they deem knowledgeable on a subject. Why? Because somehow, in the last five years, it’s become a faux-pas to be confident in your knowledge base. The early social media goers who were throwing around the word like a smear of J on their PB abused it. Wrecked it. Made the rest of us all suspicious (serious generalization, I’d like to think I’m not alone here, but then again, it could just be me) of anyone who might possibly think they know what they’re talking about.

WTF social media goers? Why’d you have to go and be that way? Now I question everyone and everything. And eff, it’s exhausting sometimes. Here you are, making me skeptical of everyone and checking out their credibility for myself before I believe a word they’re saying. Seriously, what gives?

It’s not even as though this stops in the online realm. The minute anyone uses the “e” word, I get that look on my face. Haven’t seen it yet? Just refer to yourself as the “e” word in my presence and keep your eyes locked on my facial expression. You’ll see it.

You’ve created a monster. An inquisitive, questioning, not-as-trusting-as-I-once-was monster. It’s like, I won’t trust anyone’s knowledge any more until I’ve done the background check and appropriate research to figure out if I think said person actually knows what they’re talking about. And in a world where everyone can be a publisher, it’s more time-consuming than ever. Double checking your facts because I’m not sure you’re telling the truth to begin with… how dare you challenge my once naive trust like that.

Thank goodness there’s this thing called the internet that I can at least use for my due diligence. If you’re talking social media talk and calling yourself a guru, I can creep your Twitter profile, your Facebook page and other realms of yours in order to make up my own mind. I can find out when you’re speaking next (or if you’re speaking at all) and suss out your skeezy used car salesman vibe vs. your genuine will to help people. And if you’re claiming expertise in an area I know nothing about, and you also happen to not have any kind of internet presence for me to verify what you’re talking about? Well, it’s more likely I’ll go look for your colleague who has spent the time to ensure I can at least find a bit of information about them.

See? Ruined!

Mixing business with pleasure

Bringing a social context to your business life can grey a lot of lines (and hairs). How much of yourself do you invest in an online persona for business? How much of your business time do you spend investing in relationships that may or may not relate directly to your business?

It’s a tough line to walk, some people have chosen not to walk it at all and some have dived in head first not knowing when–or if–they’ll find the bottom. I’ve done a little bit of everything and I’ve landed on the following conclusion:

Online social tools rock, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to using them, but if you’re going to use them, and use them sustainably, you’ve got to know where your boundaries are.

It’s easy to bring your entire world with you. It comes along in your pocket, all of your friends are at your finger tips. Literally, even the ones sitting right across from you that you met for a drink and aren’t talking to because you’re engulfed in all the “action” online, or you’re busy trying to solidify your plans for later on tonight… right in front of the person you’re supposed to be spending time with now (sorry, that’s a rant for another blog post). At any rate, the lines between business and social are getting fuzzier, not more concrete. It’s up to each of us to define our own boundaries.

Self imposed boundaries on social networks. What do those even look like? Networks like Facebook, where you’re forced to differentiate between a brand/company and a person, make it easy. You’ve got your personal connections in one place and your business ones in another. But what about something like Twitter? Do you go ahead with one account? Two? More?? Should you even have a personal account?

It depends. Let’s try some scenarios, shall we?

Scenario 1: You could give a hoot suite about social networking for personal reasons, but you’re the lone communications/pr/marketing person in your office and the task has fallen upon you to figure out all of this Twitter business and bring the company into this century. What do you do?

You make one account. You put your name on it somewhere (like saying this account is managed by: XXXX), and you put your own flavour to what you share, but you do it in such a way that the content isn’t so unique that the young buck you want to hire so you can have your evenings and weekends back can step in without too much disruption to your feed.

Scenario 2: You’re the young buck that was just hired to take over a social media role. You’ve got your own account, but you know the value of having a personal touch and being seen as the name and face of any certain account/company. Do you give up your personal account in lieu of promoting the business one?

No. You do both… especially if you’re a young buck! Keep your own online presence. If you’re the manager and you intend on being where you’re at for the next decade or so, you can get away with managing just the biz account. But if you’re out there movin’ and shakin’, you’d best keep a pretty solid line going between business and pleasure, you don’t need to be Calgary’s Phone Dog.

Scenario 3: You’ve been tweeting on behalf of a company, everyone knows you as that… you’ve gone and fused your own brand with theirs. Uh-oh. You didn’t really intend for it to happen.. it just did. Now what?

Take a deep breath. You’ll be fine. Go start a personal account. Right now. Then you can send all the flirty DMs you want to that really cute geek you met at the last tweetup without worrying whether or not you’re being unprofessional.

Bottom line… act on your own Twitter feed how you would act out in public. If it’s questionable, by all means, take precautions to protect it, to have an anonymous account or make damn sure you’re not the one on the biz account (and that nobody knows where you work!) Act on your work Twitter feed the same way you would act in the office or while out talking to clients. If there’s something you’re not sure about, avoid the situation altogether. It’s not worth the hassle of being one of the first people to help figure out what laws should apply where.

A Day In My Life: Tweets For Eats YYC

Scavenger hunts have always been an amusing way to spend a day (I even did one at my sixth birthday party). But with the advent of social media, they’re taking on an entirely new twist. Even Pearl Jam hopped on the hunt train. I’m not sure we hit 5.9 Million tweets globally, but we certainly took over Twitter today in Calgary as participants in Tweets For Eats YYC tweeted in photos, took good-natured jabs at one another online and raised the profile for a Calgary charity as we descended upon the city. It’s yet another avenue of online successfully meeting offline… and all participants and spectators having a blast in the mean time. Today was, without a doubt, the most fun I’ve had at a fundraising event in a long time.

Let me start out with a little run down of the day. I was on a team with Margot from The Costume Shoppe and her friend Karen. We met for a morning picker upper at Chiasso and then headed on over to Melrose to join the couple dozen people already stationed outside waiting for the doors to open and check-in to begin (not to mention the free breakfast sandwiches, yogurt and fruit Melrose had waiting to fuel us up). The hunt didn’t start until 11, but at 945 the doors opened wide and we rushed in to get our forms all filled in and wait for the much-anticipated hunt list.

We ride bareback on Team Silvester

At 11 on the nose, the list was handed out. There were over 200 items consisting of sponsored items recognizing the hunt sponsors, physical items (as in we had to bring these back with us), photograph items (send in a picture) and unique items (only one team could win each one!). Most teams were out the door lickety-split. Not us. We took our time and perused the entire list, sorting out what we wanted to find and splitting it up by neighbourhood or location. From there, we hopped in the car and off we went!

The hunt could take you from just a block or two from the start point all the way out to Elbow Falls. We concentrated on covering as many items as possible in as small an area as possible. This meant restraining ourselves to downtown, Inglewood and… where else but The Costume Shoppe!

I had no idea the day was going to go by so quickly! Part of that was thanks to my awesome teammates, I couldn’t have asked for two better ladies to spend the day with. We had a hoot and had a similar approach to the hunt! The other, well, there were just so many places to try to visit and items to get. We got a little creative with a couple of the clues, like having our team crawl underneath a truck bed instead of a real bed and finding a paper clip in place of a “trombone” (Hint: it’s the French word for paperclip). I was also introduced to a couple of places in the city I wouldn’t have known about otherwise, like this garage filled and decorated with bottle caps!

We didn't do it... I swear!

The day ended at 400pm back at Melrose to tally points, have some much-needed food and drink, listen to some tunes and await the winner of the grand prize of 4 iPads! Three recounts later, we had our winners. The Four Pink Ladies!

Check out the #t4e stream to read all the Twitter updates and photos from the day.

Congrats John S, Mike B, Mike and Ally S on a hunt well done. Can’t wait for next year!