Social Media Fatigue

Are you suffering from social media fatigue? Take a look at this article.

But what bothered him most was how the site seemed to suck up all his time. Without even thinking about it, he caught himself automatically checking Facebook on his phone while sitting at the bus stop.

It seems that this could be a major issue for some people. The emphasis seems to be on followers or friends -- quantity over quality. But how do you deal with all the stuff that comes from thousands of these? People collectively spend 700-billion minutes per month on Facebook according to the company. That's a little hard to believe. For the 6-billion inhabitants of the planet, that would mean each one spends 116 minutes per month on Facebook. And, consider the number of people on the planet who don't have access to the Internet and of those who do, how many don't have access to the Facebook site(s).

One site estimates that there are 2.1-billion internet users in the world (March, 2011). That raises the time to 350 minutes/month. If these users sleep eight hours per day, then in the average month, the users spend 1.2% of their time on Facebook. And, of course, not every one of the 2.1 billion inhabitants of the planet with Internet access are Facebook members.

Facebook says they have 700-million active members. That means that these users spend 1,000 minutes/month on average on Facebook. That's 3.5% of their waking hours on Facebook. That may be more time that some of them spend with their kids. (We could get into all sorts of analysis of how many have kids, but you get the idea, it's a lot of time.)

And many of us are on other social media sites -- Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. How do you keep up with it all. Or maybe the better question is, DO you keep up with it all?

I mean if you follow thousands of people on a service, how do you keep up with the torrents of stuff that comes your way? I suspect that many of us start to treat social media like much of the other media to which we are constantly exposed. It washes over us, but we don't pay it much attention. It is just there, competing for our attention, but not really noticed consciously. We become numb to it.

The Berlin Wall

The road where the museum is located was divided in two on August 13, 1961, and some 2,000 east German residents were expelled from their houses to allow the communist authorities to secure the new border.

[source] I was there. My dad was stationed in Ulm, Germany, at the time. We had to have bags packed and be ready to leave with 24 hours notice. That was 50 years ago. Things have sure changed in that time. Here I am writing something that is potentially read by people around the world. The dividing line between cultures is being defined by electronic walls and social media is spurring further change. The wall was up for 28 years. It's mind-boggling to think what the world will be like 28 years from now.

Social Media Newbies

I'm convinced that the only people who follow me on Twitter are people who want my business. OK, there may be a few others like family or friends, but not many. You can tell the newbies. You get a notice they are following you and you wonder why. So you bop on over to their page, take a look around . . . and you still wonder why.

OK, they grabbed everyone in a geographic area or who even remotely did something related to their business or is male, or . . . The idea seems to follow me so I will blindly follow them, see their tweets about their product or service and be tempted to buy their product or service.

Well, here are a couple of tips for anyone doing this . . .

1. Don't assume that I will follow you just because you follow me.
   Quantity is not my motive. I really don't care how many followers I have or how many people I follow. I'm more interested in following people who have something to say that I am interested in.
2. If you do want to get me to follow you, say something I'm interested in.
   No, your next sale isn't interesting to me, but maybe something about what you do IS.

After all, it's social media, not sales media. You will get my interest by having something interesting to say--by telling me something helpful that I don't need to buy to know. By doing that, you are showing me your expertise and peaking my interest in the area you are selling into. Maybe even eventually getting my business.

Which, after all, is your sole reason for following me in the first place . . .