In 2008, social media has become a pervasive part of our businesses, lives and personalities. It affects our friendship groups, our information channels and our online reputations. But I constantly hear the woeful lament from clients and prospects that there is “too much to take in” and “how is anyone supposed to keep up”? As much as I advocate the use of social media for building a reputation online, really engaging with stakeholders and making an impression, there is always the fear that by constant skipping from one shiny new object to another, you are never going to make a real impact, or worse, you aren’t going to achieve anything at all.
As more and more sites gain buzz, it is pretty tempting to sign up for the next big thing. Curiosity isn’t bad, but curiosity can suck huge amounts of time out of the day and it can also be a never ending process. And in reality, is that curiosity actually benefiting you? Unless you work in the social media space and it is part of your job to know what the next big thing is before it happens, curiosity can very quickly get you bogged down. It is this sensation which is responsible for social media fatigue – too many sites, too many updates, too many new interfaces to learn. And the important thing to remember is that the early adopters tend to be a particular type of person. You need to decide whether that is the type of person who you need to be interacting with.
There are arguably three types of adopter – early (or pioneers), mid (or settlers) and later (or colonists – I really like the imagery that Jeremiah Owyang developed with this). You need to decide which one you should be, considering all of your other responsibilities and, far more importantly, which one the people who matter are. If your audience are colonists, then your struggle to keep up with the pioneers is going to leave you sitting and waiting for your audience to catch up, while the pioneers have gone on ahead. You’re effectively torn.
In many circumstances, holding back is a good idea. Let the pioneers fight the Indians and dig the wells first. Don’t allow yourself to get caught up in the hype when your goals suggest you should be doing otherwise. It is way too easy to spend all of your time trying to be in on the next discovery, but the time you are spending doing that could be spent doing some far more useful things for your reputation. Heed the words from Mashable, and think about what you really want people to know about you.
Wanting to change society means more than than setting up some social networking site that lets people chit chat with each other. Changing society involves more than playing with all the newest and coolest toys while you brag about being involved with change.You want to change society then step away from the keyboard and get your hands dirty. You want to make a difference then start with those things close to you not half a world away.
And leave the shiny new objects to someone else to try out.
Thank you to Sergey Yeliseev for the image
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