Social media. Buzz words that have taken the world by storm the last few years. With good reason, too. Suddenly it's become hip and cool to be on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, FourSquare, Lifeshare, Pinterest, PPL, ULive, FindMe, and LetsBeFriendsEvenThoughWeNeverLikedEachOtherInHighSchool. (Note: some of those aren't real.)
You get my point. There are a lot of sites out there falling under the "social media" umbrella. All of them try to offer something different. All of them are trying to find their niche in the Interwebs. Which means we the consumers have to find our niche as well.
Therein lies the problem. It's very easy to get caught up in the tidal wave. Of trying to be on every site. Of trying to attract a following on every site. It's middle and high school all over again, trying to fit in with the popular kids and get that all important popularity boost. More followers or friends or likes or +1's mean more people like you. To become popular, you decide to change who you are and write stuff that really isn't you. What good does that do? You're already caught up in the rat race of real life. Why carry that over to social media?
Sure, I've had grand delusions of having a blog read by thousands of people every day with site sponsors or having my witty, sometimes cynical tweets retweeted across the globe. But that would mean changing who I am, or at least who I want you to think I am.
My wife I think has it figured out, at least more than I do. She recently culled her Facebook friends down to 110. From somewhere north of 400. Why? Because she didn't interact with 75% of those people. She didn't care how toasted they got or how they were never happy or blah blah blah. At 110 friends, she's more interactive. She and fellow moms can talk about being moms. She can put up a question and get several responses in an hour. That's the value of social media. Finding your niche and creating community within that niche. If that niche only has 50 people, that's 50 people you can interact with, support, and encourage.
That's my opinion anyway. What's yours?
-D
That's exactly why I cut down my FB friends list, I didn't care about those people enough to want to keep up with them. Now I keep up with who I'm friends with. I'm not bogged down anymore and I actually talk to most of those people. Do I want to cut it down even more? Yep! And I do go in once a week or so and see who I can delete. I'm not trying to be mean, but I just want to cut down on the distractions and if we don't communicate, it's a distraction. And now I can focus on what I really want to focus on, being a wife, mom, being 8 months pregnant, cooking dinners, menu planning, keeping a somewhat organized and clean home and getting back into crafting. These are all things I want to focus on, not people getting drunk or having a bad day again for the 100th day in a row. I have a life and I want to live it!!!!
ReplyDeleteOne time I decided to trim my FB list, and the next day I got a message from someone I had deleted asking me why I had removed her and saying she was really hurt because we'd always been friends (even though I hadn't seen or talked to her in several years). So I just added her back because I felt bad. LOL
ReplyDelete