Re-evaluating My Ratio

With so many new social platforms/tools released everyday, it’s becoming a full-time job to try to keep up with them. But, it's my job to maintain a keen eye on how the communication landscape is changing. Matt Williams, Group Planning Director at The Martin Agency, and I were having lunch a while back, and he had a great line: “My job is keeping me from doing my job”.

We do have an obligation to understand the shifts and growths in the media landscape, but at what sacrifice? It’s important to have discipline. I could literally spend all day, everyday reading about social media because there is so much chatter and coverage. But I don’t.

As a strategist, I can’t afford to sacrifice the “why” for the “how”. In other words, I have to find a balance between education and motivation in these explosive times.

I recently realized that I was feeling as if I had to read every blog post, tweet, Facebook update, etc. to “stay on top of it.” My head was about to explode. I was anxious. And, I was experiencing a certain information paralysis.

So, I've cranked up Seesmic for Twitter and Facebook, cut my Google Reader subscriptions to 20, started using IM more and encouraged people to call me to cut back on emails - and generally tried to cut back on my information in-take.

For someone who loves to read and discover all of these fascinating, new tools that are empowering people and brands to extend and focus at the same time, it's hard to step back a bit.

I'll let you know how this works out...