I'm a very bad communicator!

Such a question of the modern times, but is there such a thing as social media overload? This is a very strange question coming from me who is quite obviously obsessed with every form of social media possible. The reason I ask it is that I think I may have reached my threshold. I’ve spread myself too thin.

Recently I started getting messages via my LinkedIn account and it completely freaked me. I’m already appallingly bad at getting back to people without yet another place I need to be checking messages. So when I say ‘overload’ I do not mean the amount of time spent on social media, god forbid there aren’t enough hours in the day, but rather the amount of different places I now need to check messages. I am officially at capacity.

I guess if I was a better communicator this wouldn’t be a problem. Quite frankly I am too self-absorbed and lazy. What is frightening is that my day job is as a communications professional, so its rather disturbing that I am so bad at it. I feel horrible about this all the time. I wish I could be better. In my fantasy world all communication avenues are funneled into one giant receptacle that gives me everything I need to know via the one channel.

Work is all about the email and voicemail, both mobile and landline. That is pretty clear. I say to people all the time if you want to be sure that I will pay attention than the work email is the best way. Cause once you factor in social media the lines all become very blurry, adhoc and messy for me when it comes to communication. The LinkedIn messages started me thinking, and conducting a little social media inventory. Here are my findings and a scorecard for myself! Let me reiterate, very few people are as self-absorbed as I am…

Twitter: I don’t care who you are, what you are or where you’re from; if you tweet me I will tweet you back. Why? Because I love Twitter nearly as much as I love talking. Having said that, I am really bad at following my Timeline as I spend all my waking hours on Mentions – see, self-absorbed. But overall I’m quite good in this space.

FaceBook: Hit me up on my wall and I’ll see it no probs. Messages on FB are so full of crap from different groups, causes, fan-sites, etc that I follow that I have to scroll through too much to get to my friends. I gave up months ago. Subsequently I’m losing friends all over the place. I keep promising myself I’ll spend some time replying but somehow never get around to it. Bad St. Murphy, bad. See this is why my funnel idea would work brilliantly! (As a result of this post I’ve just been through my FB and deleted/’Unlike’d so much stuff)

Blog: Still not sure of what the protocol is with this one. I read everyone’s comments for sure, I love them, but it feels really self-indulgent (even for me) to be commenting on your own blog. Can anyone offer advice on that? What is the expectation?

LinkedIn: I’m ignoring this one. As I am not looking for a job ,and not particularly good or interested in networking , do I really need to partake in this one? Me thinks not. But of course I accept all friend requests regardless.

FourSquare: This one has died a slow death for me. Was fun when I was the mayor of everything, not so much anymore now I’ve been ousted. Still not really sure what the point of FourSquare ever was so lets let this one go through to the keeper moving forward.

Grindr: Being a newly single gay man Grindr was very exciting/satisfactory for approx. 3 weeks. Then something weird happened. I became old fashioned. Whatever happened to being sleazy in a bar or flirting with strangers in the hope of more. Grindr ruined all of that. One day I was frantic on Grindr, the next I was non-existent. Cie la vie. Was originally an A+ but now I’m a…

Yammer: The lovely digital boys at work got us all excited about this one, we all jumped on board. Now I don’t even think I have it bookmarked, let alone know my password.

Text Messages: Now I know this is not social media but the lines are so blurred when it comes to smart phones that anything that beeps I class as social media. I’m pretty good on this one. I tend to respond within 24-48 hours. Although my responses tend to be brief and grammatically correct.

So all up I’m faring pretty poorly on social media communication. See, I’ve spread myself too thin in my eagerness to be a part of everything. Jack of all trades, master of none. Lesson learned. The sad truth is I’m not about to dump any of my beloved social media, instead I’m going to fine-tune. Gone is Yammer, gone is messaging on LinkedIn. Culled are all the ‘Likes’ on my FB page and Grindr is disconnected. Phew, I feel better already. Possibly I may even become more social because of it.

Just please please please do not introduce anymore social media! Google+, heed the warning, I must ignore you!


Does anyone else have this problem????