In the past 2 years that I’ve been more intensely involved in social media than ever, I’ve found that this entire phenomenon is both a blessing and a curse.
The blessing
Social media has changed my life in so many ways. I’m not going to give you a motivational speech, so don’t worry. All I’m trying to say is that, if used extensively and intensively, social media platforms and tools can really make a difference. For me, the difference was that I got to meet hundreds of people, express my professional opinions, create original and creative campaigns and put into practice almost every idea I’ve ever had.
The curse
Since nothing comes for free, all this exposure and promotion comes at a price. The price we pay is having to digest and summarize an overwhelming amount of information. I’ve been dealing with this for a long while now, and I’m still working on some techniques oh how to manage this flow and take advantage of the most useful pieces of information. When it’s ready, I’ll gladly share it with you.
The redundancy
The biggest part of all this social media noise that we have to cope with every day is generated by repetition, by regurgitation, by the reworks of every new piece of information that emerges. This leads to the creation of superfluous articles, pointless infographics, mindless tweets and senseless status updates.
I’m afraid that the hundreds and hundreds of social media blogs that exist and continue to appear make it even harder to assess their credibility and authenticity.
Evan Carmichael published a list of 50 social media blogs that did a good job in 2011. I can’t help but wonder: of all the information they published throughout the year, how big of an overlap did they have?
I would like to ask you: how are social media blogs helping you right now? Because it seems to me that some of them have become quite superficial. I, for one, would rather read a single article a day, but I want that article to be well written, informative and useful.
What social media blogs do you follow and why? How do they fit in your busy schedule?
[Image source.]
