This post has been a long time coming. The reason is: I sometimes need to take a taste of my own medicine!

I’ve seen lots of numbers (big numbers) and I don’t know which ones are authoritative so I’ll say this: The internet is expanding. Quickly. And as one trend gives way to the next, new opportunities make themselves available. A few years ago, "social media" was an unheard-of term. Today, everyone is signing up for social media marketing and marketing consultants are extending their brand to include social media coaching.

Recently, I found a site that promised to help me manage my social media identities in one convenient place. I liked the idea so I signed up. They presented me with a huge list of potential social media sites – over 200 – that they would help me manage. I thought I was doing well with the accounts I had but this list was amazingly long… and although I spend my entire day working on web-related activities, I hadn’t heard of a number of these sites. So I started clicking through them to compare them.

Some seemed helpful and compelling. Others did not. Worse yet, there was a bunch of sites that claimed to be social media sites but lacked any of the characteristics that actually make a social media site (suggesting to me that they’re trying to cash in). Look, I don’t want to point any fingers at specific sites, lest they disagree with my accusation, but I will say this: The best ones… are the ones you’ve heard of and probably already have an account with.

Here is a funny YouTube video that shows a hilarious parody of the excess of social media.
 

Now, I don’t want to come across like I’m harshing on everything out there. But I want to give some advice to you (and to me).

Find a couple of good social media sites and stick with them. Integrate them with each other and become active on them. Don’t try to sign up with every single social media site out there because there are just too many and there seems to be more everyday. Instead, find a couple that work for you and excel at using them. For example, out of the handful of business-focused social media sites like LinkedIn, Xing, and Ecademy, I’ve chosen just one and am focusing on it. The others might be good (in fact, I like a couple of the features of the others that aren’t present in the one I’m using) but doing this will help you manage your time. I’d rather do 1 thing well than 3 things shoddily.

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