This week has been interesting in the social media sphere as I tried to play catch up with blogs and Twitter after a 5 month hiatus to get settled in from our move. I have been easing my way back into blogging and thought I’d dip into the Twitterverse to get reacquainted with the tweeps and boy, do I ever have something to say!
It’s amazing what you notice after taking a break. I don’t want to lay this all out as if it’s the tweeple’s faults, because it could just very well be that I’m following too many of the same kind of tweeple. Thus my twitter stream looks like a massive informercial filled with gimmicks and promises of the best products, services, and even religion if I’ll just *click here*.
Somewhere, somehow, some bigger entity out there has found a way to coordinate all these people into one rather large unending commercial. So I have been looking through some of these folks’ profiles to see what their stream looks like as a whole, because it could be that all these people tweet out advertisements at the same time I happen to be on.
Nope. I’m seeing tons of twitter streams filled with cyber commercials and it makes me wonder if these people ever blog for enjoyment anymore.
Clickity click.
I must go see these blogs and investigate what’s going on.
Floating ads coming from the right, left and even from under my keyboard?!?
Ladies, we want to read your blogs, not be subscribed to your advertisers.
Can these floating ads come up into the side bar instead of over the content?
My time is precious and when I want to read something to inspire me or just to get connected with another mom blogger, the last thing I want to deal with is chasing down the eensy teensy tiny “x” to eliminate that dang ad from my view and accidentally clicking on the ad; thus getting redirected to another website that has even more ads.
ugh!
Sometimes it feels like Alice with a stack of cards falling down all around me.
I want to be honest, kind, and yet humorous at the same time here, because humor always helps us to take medicine a bit easier.
But gals, we need to be better stewards of our time and attention.
{ What are we filling our heads with?}
We don’t have to be bogged down with all this fluff. Endless advertisements makes our heads, hearts, and nerves race like crazy making us feel like; we don’t have the ‘right’ product, we’ll “miss” our chance to get in on something early, and it raises our anxiety level. In a world where we’re constantly told we aren’t good enough: we just can’t afford to get sucked into cyber bondage.
I’m going to be diligent in being a purposeful blogger. I need to make some changes in order to make my online time more beneficial. Maybe these tips will prove helpful to you as well.
- Stop following brands: I’ve seen enough advertisements to last me a lifetime and these brands really aren’t paying any attention to me anyway. This will eliminate over 100 advertisements from my stream! Note: Twitter limits how many people you can unfollow in one day, so this will take me some time.
- Stop following bloggers I don’t really have much in common with: This will take some time as well. I want my Twitter time to be condensed into the bloggers that *I* want to have influence me.
- Use Twitter Lists: I can condense the bloggers I’ll choose to keep, by placing them in lists. I won’t be able to view every list ever day, but it will help immensely.
- Klout: I can take it or leave it, honestly. I know who has ‘klout’ in MY book so why do I bother letting an algorithm dictate to me who I should follow? I’ll keep it for now, because it’s interesting, but I’m no longer going to be addicted to checking it regularly.
- Block Spammers: sadly, some of our own blogging circles are spammers. I can’t tell you how many times these women spam me with DM propaganda. Please refrain from DMing me unless you really want to talk to me.
- Unsubscribe from blogs: I used to subscribe to my ‘friends’ blogs to help them get their subscriptions up. No longer! I am unsubscribing from
manymost of them. This doesn’t mean I’m not supportive or loving toward them, I just need to be smarter with my online time. Other than that, my inbox is cluttered and I spend far too much time deleting mass amounts of them. Sorry ladies, I just can’t keep up.
These are the main steps I’m going to do for me to make better use of my online time.
I feel so free and empowered!
I’ll be sharing another article to go over the steps I’m taking to get my online time more organized; including why and who I diligently follow. I addition to that, I’ll be informing you how you can get in on a little something special I have in the works.
Until then have a great weekend! Unplug and go enjoy life. I’m going to!
Sounds like a great revelation! I am the first to admit I don’t get all these forms of social media. The more blogs I find, the more I see that they use give aways to get followers. I am not saying I will never do a giveaway, but I don’t ever want to forget why I write. I write for me. I write because it feels good. I write because I value my mind and I have something to say, even if it’s just to myself. I am going to follow your lead and do the same. What do you use Twitter for? My husband keeps saying, “If you don’t get it, you shouldn’t be on it.” Thank you for this refreshing post!
Courtney, I’ll post again about what I use it for and how I choose to manage my time on it. We don’t do any good diluting all our time between multiple networks. More on that later. Thanks for coming by. Keep writing from your heart.
Well said … and thanks.
You’re welcome