May 9th, 2011

5 Social Media Distractions

Soleil In Her Exerciser

When there are more choices and conversations to spend time on, one can easily become distracted. Social media as an industry has created many distractions — some of which are enjoyable, some not — that can easily cause one to lose focus. This makes time prioritization and good decision making a critical skill set. Experience shows making a conscious choice to focus on what matters, individual professional and/or personal goals, makes a huge difference.

Here are five social media items that in hindsight have been personal distractions:

1) The A-List

It’s easy to become annoyed with the A-List. The fodder is endless, whether it’s their lack of originality, the ridiculous posturing and ensuing absurd behavior, or a ridiculous stream of bad practices retweeted by hundreds or thousands. Oh yes, spending time on the ills of leading A-List voices is very easy.

Overfocusing on the A-List is like feeding the trolls. The more you talk about them positively or negatively, the more you increase their stature. Further when talking about them as A-Listers rather than people just like us, you put them above yourself, lowering your market stature. Ironic, given that most of these conversations seek to reduce the barriers between the top and middle tiers of blogging voices.

In the end, negative or positive discussions about popular content producers only distracts one from pursuing their dreams. Just like Albert Einstein said ‘What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right.’ So focus on what is right and matters to you. Focus on your business or personal dreams, reward those that merit praise (without labels), and ignore the rest.

2) Mistaking Attention for Respect

Balancing online presence and wasting time is always a difficult thing. But there are many people who spend their entire day on social networks or talking about social media while their business bombs. Or competitors outflank them while they are playing on Empire Avenue or Angry Birds, or some other nonsense. Meanwhile there are people receiving much less attention who are pulling down big contracts, spending time with their families, and achieving great things, like raising $20,000 for charity, successfully concluding a business, or changing the way news is reported.

Real results earn respect, while a big social network presence, well, that just equals a lot of attention. Understanding that online attention is not the same as a real outcome — personal or business — is the realization that online popularity can become a distraction.

3) Rankings

Windmills in Schermerhorn
Image by eric van der eijk

Measuring one’s performance against their peers has been an easy distraction, bothersome or pleasing, in nature. But while rankings like the Ad Age 150 provide a barometer for general intra-industry performance (or at least popularity), they don’t mean much to customers.

Yes, online engagement is important and demonstrating you can actually walk the social media talk matters. At the same time, writing for a stakeholder group like CMOs may be much more important to you than getting the most retweets. What is the goal? This is the difference between quantifying and qualifying online worth. Does it really make sense to compare yourself to others? Never lose sight of the big picture, otherwise you’ll find yourself chasing phantom windmills.

4) Gossip and What He/She Said

The rumor mill is thick in social media. Sure, it’s fun. So what? How does this help you achieve goals? Ever count how much time you are spending talking about other people rather than focusing on your business or goals? Notice the similarity between this one and the A-List. It’s just another form of the same problem, except a bit nastier. Enough said.

5) Social Media Conferences

Rare is the intra-industry social media conference that produces actual business. SxSW and the defunct Gnomedex are the only two that come to mind. SOBCon has been very educational from an online business owner’s perspective. The rest, well, they are great to see your online friends. If you have family and business objectives to achieve, while enjoyable, social media specific conferences tend to waste time, unless it is how you choose to spend vacation. Otherwise stick to professional conferences designed for businesses with an online focus or track.

Another way to think about the topic is when you pass from this world, what do you want your digital legacy to be? Are you investing time in what matters? Or are you distracted?

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  • http://spinsucks.com Gini Dietrich

    Two things first: 1) THAT FACE! OMG! I just want to kiss her a thousand times over and 2) Angry Birds rules, but if you have to play it more than one day, you seriously have issues.

    The only thing I don’t agree with here is your point on the AdAge listing. But we’ve discussed this before. Our prospects do pay attention to that, just like they pay attention to who PR Week and AdAge are talking about in the industry. We just won a big digital communication project from a Fortune 10 company because of our AdAge ranking, as compared to the two agencies we were competing against. Well, not solely, but it was a factor they took into consideration.

    As for the conferences, A-freaking-men! I’ve been saying this for years when people say, “Why don’t you go to such-and-such?” Because my prospects and clients aren’t there and, as much as I really would love to hang out with you and have a drink, I have limited time. So that time is going to be spent where I can be most effective in growing my business.

    • http://twitter.com/geoffliving Geoff Livingston

      Ha! Thanks. The ranking thing reminds me of PR awards, they pretty much matter to the person investing the time in them and no one else. Does it make for a credibility point? Sure. But I’ve never been ranked above the top 100 on the Ad Age 150 and I’ve gotten plenty of Fortune 500 and top tier nonprofit clients. So your point about it mattering to top clients is not true, in my experience.

      I have a friend in NYC, and she regularly gets invited to shoot-outs with some of the gentlemen in the top ten of this ranking She is not even ranked. She has 3000 Twitter followers. Guess who wins? Why? Because she has orchestrated so many winning campaigns for top brands her word of mouth referral network is to die for. Similarly, I have gotten almost every single on of these clients via reputation. Nothing beats what another brand says about you, including awards and rankings.

      • http://spinsucks.com Gini Dietrich

        We totally agree there and I think most of the top 10 are too busy worrying about their numbers than doing real client work. We compete with the big agencies, mostly because they’re in our backyard. It definitely gives us a leg up to be listed on AdAge. Hands down. An added bonus is it’s super fun to tease Danny about my coming close to beating him. But, in that sense, it has nothing to do with clients. :)

        • http://twitter.com/geoffliving Geoff Livingston

          Now I can see using a ranking as a way to throw salt in big agency wounds, er, weaknesses. Maybe I should up my ranking just to give the Canuck some grief. LOL!

          • http://spinsucks.com Gini Dietrich

            I fully support that!

    • http://twitter.com/geoffliving Geoff Livingston

      Ha! Thanks. The ranking thing reminds me of PR awards, they pretty much matter to the person investing the time in them and no one else. Does it make for a credibility point? Sure. But I’ve never been ranked above the top 100 on the Ad Age 150 and I’ve gotten plenty of Fortune 500 and top tier nonprofit clients. So your point about it mattering to top clients is not true, in my experience.

      I have a friend in NYC, and she regularly gets invited to shoot-outs with some of the gentlemen in the top ten of this ranking She is not even ranked. She has 3000 Twitter followers. Guess who wins? Why? Because she has orchestrated so many winning campaigns for top brands her word of mouth referral network is to die for. Similarly, I have gotten almost every single on of these clients via reputation. Nothing beats what another brand says about you, including awards and rankings.

  • Anonymous

    Geoff,

    Excellent, albeit rather elementary, observations. Putting first things first shouldn’t require a blog post but in today’s social media space, it’s oft forgotten. High Klout scores, tens of thousands of followers, and a RT from Chris Brogan have replaced self-improvement.

    Heck, we can all be guilty of any one of these 5 distractions (I often ask myself what the hell am I doing on twitter). But I think those people that have actually experienced real-world success in their career or business (or actually find a job and aren’t free to spend their whole day tweeting anymore) slowly begin to understand that social media is castles made of sand.

    Being a filmmaker and artist, social media has become an outlet for my film/video work and, more recently, my writing. It serves that purpose well. Ultimately, my livelihood is based on community involvement and referrals, not tweets.

    Nicely done.

  • http://www.itinerantentrepreneur.com/journal/ Robert Dempsey

    @twitter-1966141:disqus Just yesterday I was talking with a friend of mine about the relevancy of social media “scores”, rankings, and other industry credibility badges. Specifically I asked him if he thought they were necessary, especially in the face of actual results – hard core numbers. The conclusion we came to is that for the most part they are superfluous and unnecessary, if you can prove that you are getting actual results for your customers.

    Personally I’d rather focus on getting results, and I’m sure my clients would agree.

    • http://twitter.com/geoffliving Geoff Livingston

      You tend to get what you focus on, so I think there is great truth in what you are saying here. And yeah, clients don’t like being left in the cold!

  • http://www.margieclayman.com Marjorie Clayman

    Hi Geoff! Thought provoking post. I think all of us have different distractions. For me, Social Media is not where the thrust of my professional work is, so I have to be particularly careful about getting distracted from my distraction. It’s quite the brain pretzel.

    My opinion in regards to what to do about people you disagree with online is just to concentrate on your point of view. Get it out there. Whether it’s an A-lister or a person who just started blogging yesterday, spending time on them gives them the gift of attention, which is the last thing you want to do if you find their perspectives harmful.

    Not long ago, there was a post that seemed in subtle ways to attack most of what I’m doing online. I could have written an angry retort, left a hideously inappropriate comment, or tweeted that “so and so is really not as nice as I thought.” Rather, I wrote a couple of posts over the next week really emphasizing why I believed in the things that they were attacking. No links. No names. Just getting my thoughts out there. And you know what? My posts did better than that person’s did (not that I was counting).

    As for the other stuff, if your revenue is coming from Social Media activities, then you need to do what makes you money. It comes back to the perpetual misinterpretation of what ROI is. It’s not the followers or comments that create your ROI formula. It’s the money you make.

    And now I will stop writing a blog post here :)

    • http://twitter.com/geoffliving Geoff Livingston

      I like how you turned the other cheek, I, too, have taken to doing that more often, though if it is a light point of contention I will provide a link back (we used to be able to have conversations out here back in the day). But at which point do you simply ignore? It’s a tough question, a balancing act! Thank you for a great comment, Margie.

      • http://www.margieclayman.com Marjorie Clayman

        Thanks for writing a great post :)

  • http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

    I loved the line “T

    he more you talk about them positively or negatively, the more you increase their stature.” So true.

    Also the last point regarding biz conferences. The only success in being productive that I’ve managed to achieve is when you go there to interview people in order to create content for your site. The rest is pretty much one giant, big, fat piece of wasted turd pie :-)

    • http://twitter.com/geoffliving Geoff Livingston

      Like I said, some have produced client opportunities, but most of them, particularly the water cooler events are a big waste. I know you and others also feel the same way, so it is a collective experience!

  • http://www.flashfree.wordpress.com Liz S

    Geoff. SM is like a writing workshop. Take or accept that which is helpful and ignore the rest. SM has been the springboard for relationships, friendships, job opps, board appointments, blog posts etc. And now that I am facing the loss of my home in Aug, it is becoming a conduit for housing leads. Call it what you (universal) may but it’s enhanced not detracted from my life. And the beauty lies in the ability to press pause at any given moment.

    • http://twitter.com/geoffliving Geoff Livingston

      It truly is what you make of it. Thus focus on the good and not the distractions. Sorry about your home. I hope (and believe) things will work out for you!

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