Social Media: Friend or Foe?

Social Media sites like Face­book and Twit­ter have become some of the most traf­ficked sites in the world. Part of the allure is that if you aren’t con­nected 24/​7, you might miss something.

The prob­lem is you can’t be actively fol­low­ing social media all day. Face­book, Twit­ter, Linked-​​in, even your favorite blogs will chomp time faster than a school of piranha after a bleed­ing fish.  And yet, there is some truth to the allure — good stuff can be missed if you are out of the loop. It is hard to keep up.

Eas­ier said than done you say? Absolutely. The poten­tial for infor­ma­tion over­load is all too real. Some­times we sim­ply have to set bound­aries for our­selves. Using Social Media tools can be unbe­liev­ably ben­e­fi­cial to home busi­ness growth — and equally dev­as­tat­ing when not used prudently.

Want to know a secret? Nobody says you have to keep up! In truth, there is no rea­son to keep up. Not every­thing is rel­e­vant. In some cir­cles, that state­ment is blas­phe­mous. To my way of think­ing, it’s only good sense.

Let’s Talk Twitter

You would not think a place that restricts mes­sages to 142 char­ac­ters would be a time sink. It’s not the indi­vid­ual mes­sages that have the poten­tial for grid lock; it’s the net­work­ing heart of Twit­ter that leads to overwhelm.

I remem­ber hear­ing a story about when Brian Clark (Copy­blog­ger) was first exposed to Twit­ter and he didn’t get it, didn’t think it would be a use­ful tool for busi­ness. The same thing hap­pened to me. I tried Twit­ter two or three times before it stuck and I fig­ured out its value to a home based business.

Now I am as addicted to Twit­ter as Brian is — although he’s much bet­ter at using it than I.  Here’s the thing. To use Twit­ter for busi­ness it’s nec­es­sary to get away from Twit­ter itself. All of the truly use­ful orga­niz­ing tools for Twit­ter are third party appli­ca­tions and add-​​ons.

There are thou­sands of twit­ter appli­ca­tions. I’ll men­tion a cou­ple of my favorites here, but this part of the process has no short cut. You will have to check out each appli­ca­tion that inter­ests you and eval­u­ate each to see which suits both your needs and your pref­er­ences. They really all work a lit­tle dif­fer­ently. The good news is that most are free.

One of my favorites is Tweet­Deck. Another one I have used and occa­sion­ally return to is Hoot­Suite. They do essen­tially the same things. What I like best is that each allow pri­vate list cre­ation to fil­ter the peo­ple you fol­low into lists of those who inter­est you the most. The lists can be dis­played across the screen in mul­ti­ple columns so you can see your com­plete twit­ter list, your direct mes­sages and your searches, along with your lists. You con­fig­ure the appli­ca­tion it to suit your needs.

Orga­niz­ing my Twit­ter fol­low­ers into lists works great for me. I have one list of peo­ple I always read (clients, close friends, and busi­ness asso­ciates). This is my ‘A” list. It’s short so that I can man­age it since I read those tweets as they are posted. I have another list, my ‘B’ List, which has peo­ple who I don’t want to miss. Since it’s a much longer list, I read it once or twice a day rather than as the tweets come in. Truth­fully, there are a cou­ple of ‘B’ lists that I main­tain. And then there’s my ‘C’ list — that’s where my full twit­ter fol­low feed shows up. That one I check occa­sion­ally when I have  time to catch up.

Twit­ter is a time sink by nature and it’s up to you to con­trol it. You need to set both a limit to the amount of time you spend on Twit­ter as well as the num­ber of times you’ll check-​​in. I do three twit­ter checks a day for no more than 10 – 15 min­utes oth­er­wise it is too much. Some days I may need to add another time or it may take less time.

I have Tweet­Deck open but min­i­mized all the time. So tweets fil­ter in dur­ing the day. She sees each tweet briefly on her screen and can choose whether to do any­thing with it then or wait until later. This works for her in that she weaves the time she spends with twit­ter in and around other tasks through­out the day.

Face up to Facebook

OK. This may not be a pop­u­lar state­ment. Get away from your per­sonal Face­book page. Keep the per­sonal stuff for after work unless it cre­ates con­tacts for your busi­ness. Your friends will still be there when you get to it. I don’t post a lot but I do like to fol­low what is up with my pals.

Get a Face­book Fan page for your busi­ness and post to it every day, once a day. That should be done dur­ing office hours. Set aside a time every day to post a mes­sage to your Fan Page.

If you just can’t help your­self and have to know what’s being posted by your Face­book friends, get a third-​​party pro­gram like Digsby which will flash wall updates across your screen as they come in. A quick glance will ease your mind and clearly demon­strate that you really are not miss­ing any­thing life chang­ing by not hav­ing Face­book open.

Social Media — the mod­ern Water Cooler

It’s clas­sic in busi­ness, social­iz­ing cen­tered around the break room. When you work from home, Face­book and Twit­ter and Instant Mes­sag­ing replace the break room. It is tempt­ing to social­ize sim­ply because it’s fun. How­ever, just as your boss at work puts lim­its on how much social­iz­ing you can do in a tra­di­tional work envi­ron­ment, so must some­one put the same lim­its in place for your home office. And since you ARE the busi­ness, that some­one is you. Be pro­fes­sional. Cre­ate lim­its that work for you. Or you’ll be back work­ing for some­one else sooner or later.