Social Media Guilt

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I read a fantastic article the other day by Stephen Chapman over at ZDNet entitled ‘Social burnout: I am officially sick and tired of chasing social platforms‘. I gotta be honest and say that I have almost reached that point. Actually, I might already be there. I live this stuff every day, so I know how frustrated business owners get trying to figure out what they should be doing. They know they should be doing something.  Heck, I yell at them all the time telling them that they need to be doing something! But the reality is that it can get overwhelming at times.  Especially now.

With the introduction of Google+ and Google+ Pages, my workload increased overnight.  Or I guess I should say, my guilt increased overnight?  Guilt?  How could social media cause me to feel guilty?

Well, I have to help people with these things.  I have to know the answer, or at least be able to find the answer.  And I can’t do that unless I know what I am doing.  So when Google+ and Google+ Pages came out I had to jump in and figure it all out. And then I felt compelled to contribute content to yet another social network, so that I can demonstrate how it’s done and why businesses should do the same thing.

And that pushed me over the same edge that Stephen Chapman went over. I was already struggling creating content and engaging with my networks on blogs, Facebook, Facebook Pages, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Foursquare. Now I had to add another couple ‘must have’ social media tools to the list. Now my engagement activities are starting to wear thin as I struggle to keep things interesting and engaging without being boring or seeming like I am pushing too hard.

I have guilt for not being more interesting. I have guilt for not doing more on all my networks. I have guilt for encouraging small business owners to do these things because I know that some of them are going to get overwhelmed, if they aren’t already.

It’s only natural that I should feel guilty, right? Does anybody know if they make a pill for this?

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