It's one of the things we have to do to become popular on social media. Which is why I'm cutting back on it this year.
Not eliminating it – horrors – but just reducing my usage of it and my time spent on it.
You see, the truth is I have realized I don't really want to be that popular. I like blogs, because they (sometimes) have something to say. But today, success in newer social media appears to be measured in raw numbers, and I disagree with that. That's why I've been pruning some of my connection lists.
When I see someone with 42,000 followers on Twitter, I burst out laughing. Is the ego really so fragile, that we need that kind of number to affirm that we exist? I don't need 42,000 or even 5,000, mostly irrelevant, followers on Twitter. I have trouble managing 1,000.
Also, I don't want to have mindless conversations with hundreds and hundreds of Facebook "friends", many of whom I don't know, simply so I can boast to the few people I really do know about how popular I am.
And, even though I've been using it for more than about five years, I don't want to be a LinkedIn LION so I can spam my contact list with blatant messages to buy my stuff.
This might sound strange coming from someone who was singing the praises of social media a mere year ago. But during that year, social media became an essential part of business marketing. So, now, conversation too often means a torrent of flat out marketing and advertising. It's becoming overly commercialized.
Admittedly, I use social media as a networking platform for (subtle) business development, as well. But these days, I find myself killing 75 per cent of my social media messages because they're screaming marketing and are meaningless to me.
For example, I really don't want to be a "fan" of every business that happens to find my name on Facebook. I've done many in the past week and so have begun to ponder what this fan thing really means.
Maybe I'm being too precise, but does vaguely knowing a business make me a fan of it? Isn't a fan supposed to rave about you? The point of all business marketing is to create raving fans who will refer you, but I don't think shouting at me is going to make me that kind of fan.
In understand that much of this shouting is coming from people who don't really get it, and just see it as another cheap advertising channel. But I use social media to follow what people I know are doing and thinking, not to be screamed at by some guy in Detroit who's pushing a dubious online marketing system.
So this year, to keep my sanity, I think my social media usage will be a version of the Triage system used in medical facilities: The stuff that's most important to me will be noticed, while the rest will be ignored.
I don't think I'm alone in wanting my media, social or otherwise, to be relevant.
Am I?
