I’ve seen lots of posts, and been in lots of discussions recently from this thing Cammy Bean has pegged as SoMeFat- or social media fatigue. Cammy describes it as the burnout from constantly being in the public eye.
@SANPenguin posted a link to an article about the dichotomy between sharing information and actually building someone else’s application. The post talks about Quora, which is another “free” app that relies on the contributions of experts to build content.”
I have to agree – constantly being “on stage” is exhausting – and we have to find ways to carve out time and space for reflection and being alone.
One thing that strikes me about these posts is that they are primarily focused on the personal side of things – what if you are leading a team at your business that is goaled on social media activities?
My colleague Nada Wheelock and I have been discussing this…if you are leading a corporate team that is engaging in social media, where do you have them focus? The tools, applications, etc change from day to day. What is the most important thing for them to focus on – especially if social media is but one of many job requirements? And how do you choose a tool that will be long lasting – in other words that will exist next year? How do you protect the individual privacy of that team?
To take that to an even further extreme — is it possible to chose a tool for the enterprise where we can be sure that the data generated by our resources stays with and benefits the enterprise? If you read this article on big data by @acrolll, I’m not sure that is something we can do with any certainty. We may be past the era where we can be sure we own the data generated by our resources.
This post is not really explaining things, it is more asking things. How do you make sure the time spent by resources you manage ends up benefiting your company as much as (if not more than) the owner of a social media application?
Social media has meant a cultural and behavioral shift that requires new skills. Just like Toastmasters helps people overcome a fear of public speaking – with Social Media, you need to start somewhere. The specific tool is less important than overcoming fear of the unknown.
So….do we need something like Tweetmasters?
If there isn’t a good reason for the activity, you’re going to get fatigue. This is one of the reasons “vanity metrics” like number of followers, number of page views, or number of retweets aren’t useful in the long term: they don’t get you anywhere.
Decades of research into how to motivate employees show that people are at their best when they know what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and how to excel. That’s what good managers do: put employee work into context and provide fair feedback. The same is true of social media.
There’s a flood of data. That means information flowing to you requires good filters — the web is push, not pull, these days. And the best filters are the ones that allow you to focus on what’s driving your business KPIs, such as sales, contribution, collaboration, and productivity.
I find that when fatigue sets in, it’s a good idea to work “backwards” up the funnel from the goals you have. If, for example, you’re using a community to improve customer support (fewer inbound calls, higher satisfaction ratings, more user-generated FAQ responses) then what incoming data, and what user behaviors, drive those? That’s an experiment you can run, and ultimately, when you know why you’re dealing with a particular feed or acting in a certain way, it’s less likely to tire you out.