It’s Not Networking it’s Notworking
How much time do you spend working on your Web 2.0-cross voting network? Don’t get me wrong, a network is vital, the right network can propel you into social media marketing heaven. But, there comes a point where watching your story rise on digg and constantly plundering your IM contacts becomes notworking, not networking.
You become so desperate you ping the weird stalker you hoped would go away, but you are so desperate to squeeze those extra votes out of the tube you are willing to dance with the devil.
The law of diminishing return kicks in at some point, where you would get more out of working on your content than doing the ping-tango with your IM crowd.
Should you even have to ask your network to vote for you? If you’re content is good enough wouldn’t they vote for it anyway, or are they in the same frenzied vote-begging mode?
Do you find yourself submitting your own stuff constantly to sites? Why are people not submitting it for you? If you are new, then this happens, but if you have been producing content for a while and you are still not on the radar then maybe you need to spend more time on your content.
There is no big secret to making great content, the most important factor is time. you have to spend a lot of time on content to make it fantastic. And how can you do that if you are constantly on IM chatting about the latest plot twist on Lost or Twittering away about the chocolate bar you are eating.
I am as guilty as any for wasting time networking, but I love to chat, I love to meet new people and it’s very easy to justify it as work and not for what it is, notworking.
Later I will talk more about building your network.
March 7th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
“doing the ping-tango” LMAO! I agree it’s easy to waste huge chunks of time achieving very little. IM is a big time sucker, so is my RSS reader, do I really need to know exactly what is going on as it happens?
March 7th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
I wrote a similar article earlier this year. I found that experimenting with social marketing was taking WAY too much of time and I wasn’t spending any time doing the things that make me more money. I think balance is the key, too much of anything can be bad.
Nice post.
March 8th, 2008 at 2:12 am
Yeah I must agree with you on this one, and I’m guilty for it too. I find, that whilst I love blogging, I tend to spend so much time networking too, it’s so easy to lose track of time when you’re trying to keep up with networking on Digg AND StumbleUpon AND twitter AND Technorati AND….you get the idea.
Networking is important, but what’s the point in networking if it’s going to be to the detriment to your content. In other words, if you can knock quality content out tenfold, then sure, feel free to do as much networking as you want, but if you are knocking out 2nd quality writing due to the amount of time your networking, then it’s time to rethink your strategies.
March 9th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Look forward to your ‘building your network’ post. I’ve cut a lot of time wasting out of my schedule these last few months and things are going better than ever.
March 10th, 2008 at 3:33 am
[...] time. Ace “social media enthusiast” and “Link builder” Lyndoman thinks that social media is NOTworking and not Networking. Interesting article [...]
March 10th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Your absolutely right. I have a day of today, but the only thing I’ve been doing today is reading Sphinn and browsing forums.
I’d better get working! :)
March 10th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I have to agree with you on this..networking has to be based on content..not only on your vote begging strategies..but most important is on the content.
March 11th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
[...] media. But Lyndon Antcliff got me thinking about my social media habits with a recent post regarding social networking… or as he referred to it - notworking. And I have to admit, I am indeed guilty of the [...]