Cleaning Out Your Social Media Closet Part I

by John R. SedivycloseAuthor: John R. Sedivy Name: John R. Sedivy
Email: john@capecodbranding.com
Site: http://www.capecodbranding.com
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Earlier this week Tim Klabunde wrote an excellent article on his blog Cofebuz called “Twitter’s Fundamental Flaw”. In his article he had discussed why many are underutilizing social media such as Twitter by focusing on themselves rather than adding value to others. In this two part series I will propose another reason why social media may be underutilized – clutter. Today I will discuss my use of social media and how I have seen it personally evolve.

Historical Social Media Use
Lately I have been considering how I use social media. When I first started on social media I was entrenched in the corporate world – therefore Linkedin was my primary tool, with Facebook being mostly for fun and I was just getting my feet wet with Twitter. Over time this evolved and I have lessened my use of Linkedin as I have become less corporate and more small business and independent oriented. Facebook has become more of a strange mashup of business/personal, while I dabble with Twitter a little more, mostly for the collection of interesting articles and references.

Like many others likely have, I had gone through various phases of posting different types of content. With Linkedin I had made many connections, some of value, others not so much – it became a numbers game to some extent – not intentionally, but just the way it turned out. I really did not post too much on Linkedin, besides a few answers to questions and my blog updates – this occurred in phases. As I received more spam from connections, I had to “disconnect” to some extent, and lessened my use of Linkedin.

Facebook I was pretty heavily involved in. Posted pictures, re-connected with friends and past business colleagues – I have found it to be a really enjoyable experience. Although this has been changing as I have been noticing e-mail viruses circulating with increasing frequency, and many are beginning to market a little too heavily for my liking. Not quite Linkedin yet, but it could get there.

I mostly used Twitter for micro-blogging, small terse updates as to what I was doing. I went through this phase with Facebook and Twitter. Where I was going, what I was having for dinner, etc. In hindsight, who cares? By the way – Tim addresses this in his article. I even had a little fun with TweetDeck for awhile, however I quickly became annoyed as I was receiving updates ever few seconds or so – only a fraction being of real value. Value of course is subjective.

Over time I had evolved to providing more value. Reducing the amount of my own personal content, such as my blog or pictures, and increasing what originated from others that I thought other friends and colleagues might find of value. This evolution had bypassed the flaw identified by Tim, so it appears at least at this point I am slightly ahead of the game.

To Be Continued…
Tomorrow I will discuss what I consider the next evolution of social media.

Over time, my use of social media such as Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter has evolved to match my interests!

-John R. Sedivy of Cape Cod Branding

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