I watched a video from a long-time Internet acquaintance of mine. His name is Ben Hughes and he is a lover of social media. Ben’s video, which I’ve embedded below, shows a few of the problems he’s having. It’s a long video but the first half is the most important. Watch below and I’ll give my thoughts:
Ben is leaving The Internet or at least leaving social media. He feels like he’s stretched to thin, has no time to be a part of the social media landscape and feels that his efforts are going unnoticed. This is very common and if you’re comparing yourself to the micro-internet celebrities, it creeps up on you. I find myself doing this from time to time but it doesn’t matter because most people in social media don’t make any money. We’re all just having a little fun and that’s what’s important. I have some advice for Ben though.
- Focus on one blog entry every week. Sunday from 10-12, you pour a glass of hot tea and write a blog entry. Don’t force it and take notes of things that interest you throughout the week and then write a blog post about them. Don’t edit your post or read over it ten times. I like to call this, “vomiting onto paper” Vomit and publish then go back to enjoying life!
- Tweet when you feel like it but tweet what is meaningful. 10 times per day, take your phone out and say something that you would consider, “fucking awesome” an hit send before you have time to think about it. Don’t read replies, don’t reply to others and don’t take part in the Twitter stream. Twitter strictly from SMS / TXT from your phone. That’s it. This isn’t the solution for everyone but trust me, it’s going to be awesome!
- Stop making YouTube videos and start making “MeTodays”. It’s very common among the Viddler.com crowd. Make one every Saturday night before you go to bed. Go to viddler.com and hit record and talk about your week. You might be tired, drunk and exhausted but it’s fun. Title them with the date and don’t put them on your blog. Keep it simple.
- Unfollow a ton of people on Twitter. Follow only the people you really care about and that interest you. Keep it under 500 people. Better yet, get it to 100 and try to avoid adding more.
- Answer email once a day for no more than 30 minutes. Keep replies under 5 sentences.
When you have more time and your projects are complete, develop a game plan and come back in full force. At least tell yourself that but I have a good feeling that people will fall in love with your style and you’ll develop a fan base doing exactly what you do now. If you do have more time 6 months from now and want to come back, you have to stick with it. Get your game plan just like you’re producing a television show and then stick with it for as long as possible (at least 2 years). If you can’t do that, then continue what you’re doing.
The one thing you don’t want to do is turn your back on social media entirely. You’ll regret it and the fanbase you have now will forget about you. Your mom and dad will always be there but that’s it and you’re going to be unhappy with the choice of giving everything up.
I hope you’ll take my advice Ben.
some good ideas….but I disagree with a few points.
Do edit your blog posts. Not doing so is just plain lazy and builds bad writing habits. If all your blog is is vomiting on paper then you won’t be able to build a decent following. Your blog is a public statement of who you are and editing shows that you care about your audience. Also, while editing may take more time at first the more you do it the faster it will go.
Keeping emails to 5 sentences may be fine for most but not necessarily all replies. Sometimes it’s useful and/or necessary to provide more information. So generally I’d just say don’t make this one a hard and fast rule but use longer replies judiciously.
Great advice Adam. And the reason I say it’s great advice and trust it is because I’ve done it three times within the past year. I’ve “re-branded” myself once and so far it’s paying off slowly, but it is a lot of work and takes a lot of my time. So sometimes I’ll give prior notice and announce that I am taking an iBreak or Blogatical (think sabbatical). Curious, did Ben take your advice?
David,
I did take some of it. I was going to reply to this post, but then remembered I was on a break. LOL
-I'm writing more often now that I don't think about having to edit and be “correct” in my writings. It helps to be able to just express myself – bringing myself back to the reason I started blogging in the first place.
-I'm tweeting less, more meaningful things. That may sound odd, but it really does work. I'm not really starting conversations anymore through @replies, but I will reply to people if they say something. I'm kind of abiding by that suggestion half way.
-MeTodays are something I've yet to explore. I don't have a Viddler account, but I'm planning on getting one and just seeing where it goes. It's somewhat similar to why I do 12seconds…
-Ohhhh jeez. I'm not really following the “don't follow many people” thing. :/ I'm actually increasing the number of people I follow. I don't know if it's a really good idea, but I don't plan on un-following people if they don't follow back. If I like someone's content, I'm following until they piss me off. lol
-It's REALLY hard to check email only once or twice since I have my Blackberry now. I find it actually MORE easy to do lots of mini-checks when I see a new email than doing one fell-swoop…
But yes, I'm somewhat abiding the suggestions. I really appreciated them, too. Adam seems to be a master on dos/don'ts of the internet ;)