In the first part I described the people who have limited patience with social media and do not spend nearly enough time online to have any impact on their online social presences.
In Part Two, lets take a look at the person who avoids realities of life.
Social Rules
From time to time I run into people who are on the other side of the spectrum of time spent online. These are the people I usually have to spend a week online tacking down from amidst a few dozen text messages with another few days spent going through an assortment of encrypted messages on Facebook Chat posted from their iPhone before I can get them to meet in person. Then the half hour session is usually filled with a dozen or so “excuse me, I gotta take this” email, text or phone call.
These are the people who have lost any kinds of balance between their personal and professional time. Generally this behavior is engrained into their lives starting in High School or College. They grow to feel being online constantly is the way life for their age group. To them it seems to be the norm since everyone around them does the same thing.
Unfortunately, about the time they hit old age… to them is around 30 years old…they look at what they are doing and those who remain addicted to online socializing as something they do not want to be anymore.
This feeling of having to be the center of everyone’s social life in order to be considered successful in their professional life has many of these now ‘30-something’ go-getters finally seeking help to get out the black hole they have created. This usually is spurred on with changes in their career. Many are taking on jobs that require a normal level of maturity for which they saw as being too ‘Old Farty’.
I have found the treatment that works best for most of these searchers of mass appeal is to parade them through a daily assortment of offline network groups. The outcome usually is mixed since the offline networking groups today tend to be populated with people who look down on ‘onliners’ or people proficient in all things tech. However, overall some positive headway is usually made since there are new connections gained which lead them back to the comfort zone of online socializing.
For the online social butterflies the road to balancing the time spent in each arena is sometimes long, but worth it for those who find they can’t live without posting something on Twitter every second to keep the attention towards them.
Effectiveness Rules
The key to determining the amount of time needed to meet both personal and professional goals is broken down into determining what amount of time is effective. I have found those brought up in the wonders of La-La-Land tend to gravitate to spending way too much time online.
Only after a complete evaluation of ones goals can an amount of time be determined. Overall, I generalize with telling people to spend more time in the place you don’t spend very much time in, which in this case would be for them to find groups, meet=ups and other offline functions that make sense to their careers. Then while in any of the social spaced, offline or online, default to being effective socially.
I usually encourage these people of the online only world to join me at the driving range for a chat as part of my coaching program. This usually results in them trying something they never would consider as an activity they would get involved with. However, for the most analytic they find it interesting the geometry involved with making a right to left four foot breaking putt. This usually opens them up to at the very least exploring Golf which leads overtime in them being comfortable on the golf course with people who have other interest in life and careers.
The time needed to be effective in social media should be long enough to interact with the people who honored you with their presence. Being online LIVE to catch someone’s status report scores the most points in developing online trust.
Not being online long enough to respond to contacts or only being online for a minute each week does nothing to help build any social and will eventually over time hurt the online reputation.
The optimum amount of time for social media efforts is three hours of constant monitoring the major social networks through out each day. This should begin the development a solid presence online. More than 8 Hours each day and the time spent starts to have a diminish in return.
Choose how much time to spend wisely. Just make sure to chose some amount of time and not avoid the social spaces all together. Depending on how fast you want to grow in your social spaces will depend on your mission. For that…
…let me know how I can help.
I’ll be back in Part Three to take a look at the Soul Searchers of the social spaces.
