The question is, should you be: Tweeting, Blogging, Friending, Linking In, Finding Your Space, or what?

I’ve sorted through the dozens of social media networks and summarized the top ones below, in no particular order of importance. I think these three are all important.

Twitter:

Best for: Establishing your reputation, finding new clients

Twitter is the  “micro-blogging” service that everyone is talking about, which means you send really short notes several times during the day to your network of “followers”. Followers are people who have chosen to follow your updates – they could be friends, or total strangers. When you send a message, it’s called a “tweet” and it can be seen by your followers and searched by the public. So, you can generate new clients by tweeting on relevant info in your niche or business. For many, searching twitter for info is just as common as searching Google.

LinkedIn:

Best for: Industry referrals

Think of LinkedIn (linked in) as a place to post your online resume. You start by creating your resume, entering your current and past jobs, education, etc. just as with a normal resume.

The next step is what makes LinkedIn so powerful: it can scan your email contacts and start linking you to everyone you know (although I have reservations personally about allowing any site or software to have access to my email address book). When you visit your connections’ pages, you can see who they know. This is what LinkedIn is all about: helping people harness the power of their business network to find new jobs, opportunities, or in your case, new clients!

Facebook:

Best for: Keeping in touch with past clients, referrals from clients/ friends

Facebook is a way to connect to your entire social sphere, family friends, and business contacts. You can post updates and photos of what’s happening in your life, and easily view the same from your friends. It’s a great way to stay top-of-mind with past clients. Facebook is a lot more casual than LinkedIn, so keep your tone casual and don’t be afraid to show people the real you (assuming the real you isn’t a shirtless couch-potato).

Madly signing up for a dozen social networks won’t help you – instead pick 2-3 and do them right.

Until next time…

(*Follow Me on Twitter*)

Ed

Now, it's not uncommon for one to have accounts in all of the social networks, and subscribe to hundreds of RSS feeds as well.

One of my clients recently told me he was getting over 1000 email's a day, and had over 1200 unread items in his RSS Reader.

Is this the ideal way of getting information?

If this sounds like you, then it's time for you to get a grip on reality and realize that you have about the equivalent of getting a Sunday edition of the New York Times delivered to your door every day of the year!

Over subscribing to free content via RSS feeds and email newsletters is an invitation to "Information Overload Disaster". You're probably getting far more information delivered to your in-box and RSS reader than you could ever hope to read.

I'm guilty of bookmarking sites I visit, all with the best intentions of going back there one day, but in reality, I very rarely ever get back there, because in the following days, I'm inundated with even more stuff, more links, more places to get more information.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

It's time to start some RSS and Social Network housecleaning!

These days, more information is published online every 24 hours than you could read in five years. The key to managing it is to be more selective, not less. So ruthlessly unsubscribe to e-zines, RSS feeds, etc. until you get only what you absolutely need.  Even then, you won’t have time to read even a small fraction of what you get. But at least your inbox will be somewhat under control.

I challenge you: Unsubscribe from 10 newsletters today. Remove every RSS feed from your reader (Bloglines, Google Reader, whatever you use) that you know you don't have (or take) time to read daily. Just unsubscribe from them.

You will feel less like you are in the Information Overload mode, and more like you can handle what you see.

It's insane that we keep piling on more and more information, when we have less and less time to do our jobs. Where will it all end?

In writing this post, I removed myself from 14 email newsletters or updates I had been getting for a long time, and unchecked 22 of the RSS feeds I had been monitoring. It felt really good!

Are you suffering from "Information Overload?"

Please share a comment below and tell me what you did today to trim some of the fat off of your Information Overload.

In the meantime, FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER (Unless that's one of the places you choose to "unload")

Ed