Lost in Facebook?  What do you do about it?

So many people get caught up in social media.  It’s fascinating!  All the people you can meet – the conversations you can have – the opportunities are boundless – you can talk about any of your interests with someone who shares that interest – what a cornucopia of options!

Then, we look at the clock . . . . . . . oh! my!!!! – 6 hours have gone by!  Where has the time gone!  And your to do list is still waiting!

Facebook can steal your life – it’s even possible to get addicted to Facebook and other social media!

After all, it’s exciting – there is always something new –

Can you live your life by Facebook?

That’s a choice for you to make.

But . . . .

If you need to live more life, then Facebook needs to be put back into the box with all the other social media.  I know you don’t want to miss anything . . . the question is what are you missing in other parts of your life because you are spending so much time on Facebook?

Are your friends neglected?

Do you spend enough time with your partner or your children or your parents or other relatives?

Are you exercising?

Are you getting enough sleep?

Are you eating regularly?

How addicted are you?

Put the Genie Back in the Bottle

Facebook and all other social media, like anything and everything in your life, needs to have a place – a place allocated in your schedule just like everything else.

Along with scheduling time for social media, it’s important to be very disciplined about the amount of time spent on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other sites you love.  Love can become an enslaver if you don’t control it.

The Solution

• Allocate time, say 1 hour a day.
• Book it in your calendar.
• Stay within those parameters.
• Put a timer on your computer to time yourself.
• And, no matter how much your hand shakes when you’re reaching for that mouse, turn it off at the allotted time!
• Put Facebook and other social media to bed on time!

You’ll love yourself for it!

Lorraine Arams
http://www.wizetime.com

Social media – do we need it?

Do we need to connect socially online for personal and business reasons?  Millions of people seem to think so or do they?  Is it the “herd” mentality that is fueling the latest and greatest or is there some purpose, some real purpose to connecting through social media sites?  Are we connecting – really?

The internet, is, even today, the modern “wild, wild West”. People uncomfortable with chaos find the internet a mystery and, often, find using the internet more time consuming than helpful.  They find a lot of junk on the internet and have to wade through massive amounts of sites before actually finding the answer to their question – most times it’s easier just to call someone you know might have the information.

500,000,000 people have flocked to Facebook.  The irony here is that only half that number are regular users. (think how small 250 million is  since our world population today is approximately 7 billion people – that’s only really 3.5% ).

It’s the same for other social media sites – so many people have signed up because “it was the thing to do” and also discovered “the thing do do” was a maze to get around and very time consuming. For instance, there is an expression on Facebook, “fan page”.  People would go to Facebook and want to set up a “fan page”, but they couldn’t find it.  To get to a fan page, you’d have to get out of your account and go to the sign up page of Facebook and find the link there – for most people, how would they know to do that?  Would it have made sense for Facebook to put it in your profile as an option or on the menu along with Wall and other menu items?  That would be too simple!

Another person I know was urged to start a group on LinkedIn.  After the experience of setting one up which she was told would only take a few minutes, she doesn’t want anything to do with setting up another group anywhere – it consumed so much time because the steps simply were not clear to her.  The group is set up and working but to her it was not worth the effort. It has provided no real benefit to her business but regularly eats up her time.

Many small business people have given up – it’s just way too time consuming to learn, figure out and keep up with all these social media sites.  There are major differences in how they operate and the lack of clear menus, clear instructions and lack of help in most cases makes it an exercise in futility often.

Why are social media sites so confusing? In my opinion, it’s because all these sites are being set up by young “techies” with no life experience outside the technological world, no understanding of how to relate to non-techies.    As the popularity grows because it’s discovered to be the latest and greatest, so does their staff but they are still all technologically focused - not consumer focused.  What makes sense to them simply doesn’t to the rest of the world – it’s an insular world.  Even Google, a milestone in internet research, merely reflects a numbers game today which can be manipulated.  Often, the worst sites get top ranking not because of their great content but their owners know how to manipulate the factors involved in getting ranked.

There’s a huge reliance on forums as a help alternative.  It doesn’t work because it’s a big waste of time too. Search for the forums – then search within the forums – and read post after post which simply doesn’t give you the answer you want.  Why?  Because you didn’t use the right word!!!  Oh, yes, a person needs to have exactly the right “word”, otherwise, it’s a maze of finding one simple answer.  Time consumed on forums can be enormous.

And the FAQ syndrome – there are few which are helpful.  It’s another maze of a few questions with a few answers which generally doesn’t give you what you want.

People give up on social media. They have an account but never, ever use it.  The refrain is always the same:  “I’ve got an account but I don’t use it.  It’s so confusing.  I don’t see the point and I’m doing fine without it.”

Do we need social media?

Obviously, the answer is not really. People are still conducting business quite successfully without social media as there are many businesses who successfully promote their business.

For most, it’s still much easier to put an ad in the paper to put one on Facebook or Adwords or any other medium and a lot less stressful.  I find a lot of businesses advertising on Craigslist and Kijiji as well as other classified sites – it’s easy for the advertiser to put up an ad and easy for potential customers to find you based on a search – they don’t have to be your “friend”.   And big business is still advertising in magazines – have you noticed how large some popular magazines are – loaded with advertising.  Why?  Because it reaches a vast audience of people interested in that particular sphere, not just people who have chosen to sign up or not.  It could very well be that newspapers will see a revival for that reason alone – ease of use and the ability to reach far more customers for their particular type of business.

People still meet with one another, text, email one another  and talk on the phone because people have found it easier to communicate using those basic, useful down-to-earth, easy-to-use mediums for connecting.

Personally, I like parts of social media and I do believe it has a place in promoting business.  It also has a place for personally to share pictures or stories.  Social media mediums have a long way to go in simplicity of use and simplicity of connecting.

Some have said that these mediums are for those who have grown up with it.  That’s not true either. A couple of teenagers I know went with the crowd using Facebook but found their cell phones were much more useful in connecting with their friends – it’s immediate!  They’ve abandoned their Facebook except for sharing pictures, invitations or general stories; they meet friends at the mall or talk on the phone for hours – as it has always been.  They text too and that’s it.  They don’t have to login hoping someone is online too – they text and the other party is immediately notified of the message.

Social media is a useful tool but it has a long way to go before it becomes the norm either personally or in business.   Is it for you?  Ask yourself:

Is there a return on the time invested?  Is that return make enough of a difference to warrant the time required?

It may be.  Could a simple website do the same thing?  Perhaps.  Would offline promotion work as well?  Perhaps.  Today, likely the answer:  a combination online and offline promotion.  Networking, face-to-face remains the best connection of all, bar none as it is connecting personally – face-to-face is always best!

Do any of us really need social media?  Only you can answer that question. If you want to discover the possibilities, I would suggest getting some help to get started because the time consumed learning it on your own far exceeds its usefulness especially for a small business person.

Start with YouTube for video training – it’s the best place and it doesn’t cost a thing. Beware of people who want to charge you a lot to teach you or to take on your social media “involvement”; one university wanted $450 for a course on LinkedIn – ridiculous!

Go to Youtube, follow along with the video and use the social media for a while to see if it’s for you.  YouTube has videos containing information from how to sign up to advance uses.  If you try to get the help on the social media sites themselves, you might end up pulling out your hair!

If you have questions, please contact me at info@wizetime.com.

Lorraine Arams

http://www.wizetime.com

Does technology save you time?  What do you think?  Do you really think so?

Part of a sociology course involved analyzing the  impact inventions had on people’s lives.  A simple example was given:  vacuum cleaners.

Prior to the vacuum cleaner, people had rugs and they took those rugs out and beat the dust out of them,   low tech – time consuming and they mopped the hardwood and linoleum floors under and around those rugs.  The vacuum cleaner changed all that.

Then people wanted carpets in their homes because the vacuum cleaner would help with the maintenance.  But then instead of laying down a floor like hardwood or linoleum which lasted decades, there was underlay, carpet, the vacuum cleaner and, of course, then cleaners for the carpet. !  And, of course, since time is money, carpets wore out much faster than hardwood and linoleum so it cost more time to earn the money to replace the carpets.  Then, there was  getting rid of parasites which loved the wonderful hiding places carpets provided, the anti allergy medications or air purifiers to counter some of the chemicals used in the carpet making process, buying bags for the vacuum, etc. -  all of this to replace the mop! In the end, carpets actually cost people more time and money for the convenience of cleaning rugs!

So it is with technology – we had a problem – it was so difficult to find data, crunch stats and find information.  So the computer came along to share information and crunch numbers.  Great!   It saved hours and hours and hours of boring, manual labor. It also costs jobs.

But then we wanted the computer to do more – we wanted it to help us with office jobs, connect to each other and entertain us. Computers did all that too.

Now, though, technology is costing us both in time and money, especially time and sanity.  We have Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, My Space —- texting —- Google, Firefox, Chrome —– anyone, anytime access to each other —– Flickr, Photobucket, Google images —-  email —– and a proliferation of software on the internet to do every single thing there is to do —–  and it all costs you even more time -

• searching thousands of sites to find the tiniest bit of information – because everything now is so  narrowed,  it takes searching multitude of sites for a collection of useful information
• texting – it’s become an addiction. People are willing to die or kill others to view and send a message.  Like the cell phones, everyone is accessible day or night – all day — all night — and at the price of ignoring the people they are with too. How can anyone think about what they need to get done when so much time is taken with trivia?
  
• social networking chews up a lot of time - connecting with friends and family – none of you are on the sites constantly so there’s frequent treks to see what has been posted instead of the occasional call or email
• search engines are many and Google may be great, the other ones may be better for you. For instance, Firefox has a lot of plug-ins which can make your particular search easier and more accurate.  Of course, a person needs to research and find out what those plug-ins are and what they do for you.  As search engines come on board, there’s another learning curve – what do they do and how do they do it?  Takes up loads of time
• anyone can reach us anywhere, any time which means we cannot have down time. It’s like putting someone in “locked chamber” – there’s no escape.  And people feel they can’t shut off their cells “in case there’s an emergency” – it’s interesting what people define as an “emergency”.  That kind of pressure weighs on the mind – people can’t relax as they are in a constant state of expectation.
• there’s an expectation that people post images for one another - great to share but how many? If you have 150 people in your group of  friends and family, how much time it would take if you view pictures from all of them?

Ask yourself:

• Is it necessary?
• What if I got rid of my cell phone or PDA other than for work or emergencies? What would happen?

• What if I went to the library to research instead of online?  What kind of experience would that be?
• What if I paid attention to the people I was with instead of paying attention to each call or text message – would my relationships improve?
• What if I shut off my cell phone or PDA, would I have some quiet down time for myself?
• What if I didn’t use my computer, cell phone or PDA for an entire day, what else could I experience?
• Would anything serious happen to anyone if I didn’t text them back or update my Twitter or called them three times on any particular day?

• How much would I save by managing technology rather than technology managing me?

Does technology save time?  Like any other tool – yes – if is properly managed and controlled by the person using them, understanding that technology is only a tool, not the  lifeblood of your life!

Lorraine Arams
More thoughts and tips at

http://www.wizetime.com

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