Is there such a thing as too much social media?

Social Media sites are like vegetables – you can never have too many

According to Dave Folkens over at Online Marketing Blog, there is. I agree with his article to an extent. Social media is everywhere. You have Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Facebook, Quora, Myspace (dying) as well as countless other sites. Sure, some are professionally oriented and others are geared more toward everyday users – but they are all social media.

Dave goes into specifics as far as time spent on social media goes. He cites “22 percent of time spent online” is on social media networks. I’m sure I spend at least double that percentage of my time on social media. If you count my phone usage, it’s probably closer to 70 percent.

That’s nearly three quarters of my internet consumption. Where do I find time to look at icanhascheezburger.com and ESPN? No wonder I’m not level 85 in World of Warcraft yet!

Woe is me.

I get it – you spend a lot of time on social media. So what?

So the question remains. Is there such a thing as too much social media? It feels like the new flavor of the month for the public relations field is social media. It will eventually slow down (I think), but until then, I say if you have the resources, hit up every social media site you can. 

That doesn’t mean companies should hire a social media person if it’s not in their budget. And it definitely doesn’t mean if your company has a social media person that they should exhaust every social media site around. But optimizing the sites that work best for your company or organization should be a top priority.

Dave touches on that by asking you if the social media sites “generate enough direct revenue to offset the staff time required?” 

Valid question, but how measurable is that? Just because you don’t see a profit from Social Media site A today, doesn’t mean you won’t see huge growth when it blows up in two months. And now you’ve been there for months posting your organization’s news and that’s what people will see when they start joining.

On top of that, most social media sites are 100 percent free. That’s 100 percent free publicity, even if only one person sees it. That one person could tell a friend who only uses their social media site of choice to look for organizations. Do you have a presence there, too?

Ever heard of Vampire Freaks? I hadn’t either, but a 10 second Google search turned it up as a “gothic industrial social networking community.” According to the website, Vampire Freaks is 10 years old with two million subscribers. If your company is selling lip rings and angsty t-shirts, this would be an amazing place to connect with the people you advertise to. If you’re trying to offload sports memorabilia…maybe pass on this one.

All in all, I think it’s just as important to keep niche social media in your sights as it is to keep the major social media sites there, but how you do that should be planned out according to your company and its goals – and I think that’s probably the hardest part.