Ruth Kaufman - Award-Winning Author and Romance Writer

Ruth Kaufman is the author of My Life as a Star, My Life as an Extra, My Once & Future Love, The Bride Tournament, Follow Your Heart, At His Command and other books.

5 Tips to Prevent Social Media Online Overwhelm

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Whether I’m wearing my author, reader or actor hat, the amount of online information and sources for that information are overwhelming.

Yet so much valuable material is shared, including:

  • casting notices-some of which are taken down as soon as enough submissions are received 
  • writing, marketing and social media tips in Facebook groups and articles/posts
  • specific projects editors/agents are looking for right now
  • info about writing conferences and contests

I don’t want to miss anything I might need, but I also don’t want to be one of those people always checking/online instead of getting things done. So how do we get the info we need in the most time-effective manner?

1) Only check some things certain times of the day. And/or set a time limit. There are apps for this, or you exercise self-discipline.

2) Take advantage of custom notifications. I have different email accounts for different purposes: one personal, one for acting, one for writing, one for shopping and one for miscellaneous things. Each account has a different notification (the shopping one is silent!), so I only have to stop what I’m doing and check if I hear certain sounds.

I also have Facebook notifications for all groups I really care about, and check notifications every hour or so to see if there’s anything I need to pursue.

Your phone can be distracting, too. I also have custom ring tones for certain friends and one for talent agencies (“Popular” from Wicked). The only downside is I don’t have all clients and obviously potential clients in my phone, and sometimes agents use other numbers. So when I hear the default ringtone, I often check rather than wait to see if someone leaves a message.

3) Focus on one or two social media outlets you like best and find their shortcuts. For example, I use lists on Twitter (casting, authors, publishing, etc.) and favorites on Facebook. This takes a bit of time to set up, but will save time going forward.

4) Skim and skedaddle. You don’t have to read every word of every post. Learn to skim for highlights and to skedaddle as soon as you realize something isn’t as important or interesting as you thought it would be.

5) Respond efficiently. While you want to be careful what you post (as we keep hearing, the Internet lives forever), keep track of how long you spend on each comment or post. See if you can trim that time.

If you have other tips, please share!

Wasting Time

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Email, IMs, Facebook, email groups and text messaging have made communicating with friends so much easier and a lot more fun. Yet, if we aren’t careful, all of these fabulous staying in touch tools can also be huge time sucks. One of my 2009 goals is to reduce the number of emails I receive and manage those I need more efficiently.

I am currently part of more than 40 Yahoo! groups…almost all are writing related. I’m on digest (which means I get bunches of individual emails combined into one), but I still get at least two dozen digests a day. On another email address, I get notification emails from magazines I subscribe to and stores I’ve shopped at. I will unsubscribe from most of those…but some I’ve tried to cancel keep coming back (like trying to get your name off a snail mail catalogue list–can it be done?).

How many times a day do you hop on Facebook or reply to comments/write on walls/tag pictures? How many chatty emails from friends do you answer/how much time do you spend IMing during the workday? Do you stop working on a project to IM? All these things take you out of “the zone” and reduce productivity.

I challenge you to add up all the time you spend on email on a given day. Then look at how much time you had to spend, for example on work emails or urgent matters, compared to how much time you chose to spend on casual blah blah blah, no matter how fun that might be.

The lure of emails is often difficult to resist. What can we do to take control?

Suggestions:

–Instead of constantly monitoring your emails and responding haphazardly throughout the work day, set specific times to answer them, such as a half hour at lunch. Set a timer.
–Set up a separate email address for friends and another for Facebook/MySpace, so that you aren’t distracted when you need to look at your business emails.
–Turn OFF IM while working.
–Turn OFF the incoming email sound on your PC. And your BlackBerry/phone.
–Decide to stop the chain and not reply to every reply with another cute joke or “Thanks” or “Talk to you soon.”
–Ask friends NOT to send you links to videos etc. Or if you can’t NOT look at every single thing a friend sends you, make sure to set a time limit.
–DO find an efficient way to organize your emails so you can easily revisit those you need.
–Do an end of the year cleanup and remove yourself from all lists, groups, store emails that you don’t REALLY need.

Facebook???

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Recently I put a profile up on Facebook. You’d have to live under a rock not to have heard of it and MySpace, so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I’m still not quite sure.

So far, FB seems like a huge online timesuck. You could spend hours searching for new friends, inviting and answering invites, writing on walls, checking everyone’s updates and adding your own. I guess some people get emotionally invested in increasing their number of friends. And by the complexity of their pages, you can tell that some have spent hours customizing and adding info.

As a cousin wrote, for me there’s just too much “social spam.” How are people I’ve never heard of finding me? Some I have friends in common with, but some I don’t. Maybe FB should include in the friending invitation info about how that person found you. I don’t yet understand all the side applications (and I think I read somewhere that some of them aren’t completely safe and might track your internet usage, etc.).

And what is the point of things like “green patch” and “friends for sale?” Someone bought me as a pet, and wants me to click to find out how much I cost. What does that mean? Nor am I that interested in playing the various games I’ve been invited to.

Maybe I’m too old to get it, or maybe I just have a different definition of fun.

Do people really meet new people via these sites? Do they connect with long lost contacts and friends…and if so, in a meaningful way? I’d bet if people took all the time they’re spending on Facebook/online games, and invested that in their careers or with their live friends/family, they’d probably get a lot more accomplished. But perhaps in today’s world, some find online relationships more satisfying than being face to face. Or…remember this…talking on the phone.

Let me know what you get out of Facebook. And maybe I’ll finally understand why it’s so popular.