One of the things that happens when you become slightly famous is that a whole lot of people want a little piece of your time. Sure, it may only be ten minutes, or even two, but multiply that by dozens, or even hundreds, of people, and pretty soon you’re buried in a stack of email, voice mail, Twitter DMs, Facebook messages, and so on, most of which will take some time to reply to, and some of them maybe never.
That can be frustrating enough by itself – you want to help everyone and reply to every email in a timely fashion, but it’s simply not possible, or at least not practical. Unfortunately, some people take offense at it, or attribute it to something other than simply information overload. They think you’re either mad, rude or disorganized, when in reality, you’re just very, very busy.
Social media can exacerbate this problem. Besides creating even more channels for people to demand your time, it also can create difficulty when you’re publicly spending time in social media and people who are trying to communicate with you individually see that, as happened to Steve Rubel last night:
I can empathize with both sides of this. On the one hand, I totally empathize with Steven in this situation. The smiley face is a small amelioration of the fact that he’s being called out on this issue over an 8-word Facebook post, which I’m sure took far less time than responding to her email would.
[NOTE: Karen’s a friend of Steve’s, not a client, and her post was clearly in fun, but still, it illustrates the point. What follows is stream of thought, not based on this specific example. I’m not accusing Steve of what I describe below, and I realized after the fact that it may have come across that way. Apologies to Steve & Karen for that – not my intention.]On the other hand, if I were a paying customer of someone, waiting on work from them, it would be very frustrating for me to see them blogging, conversing on Twitter, posting extensively on Facebook, etc. As a service provider, I become pretty scarce in social media when I have clients waiting on work from me. While you’re entitled to use your time as you see fit, and to continue to engage in marketing while you have client work due, I think being really “out there” in public social media is kind of rubbing it in their face.
Always keep in mind that your current customers are far more important relationships to your business than your social media fans and followers. Take care of your existing customers first and foremost, even if that means a brief hiatus from your social media channels.
I completely agree with your point. I’ve been frustrated by waiting for feedback on a subcontractors’ work, only to see him kibbitzing on Facebook.
Then again, can any of us ever truly say that we have EVERYTHING on our plate done?
It’s a matter of degrees. But when you’re in the middle of a hot project and you know someone’s waiting for your input…probably not a good time to take a public social media break.
I recall that back in ’08, before Twitter became so popular, I used to tweet without much thought about breaks I would take during the day – but once clients and partners started following me, it completely changed how I used Twitter.
Well, I think its really how you react and handle the situation. We can use social media networking sites to make someone famous. Like that if Youtube sensations, Justin Bieber and Charice. You just need to utilize the resources that you have. -Ingeborg Vanwagner, Social Networker from Modström gone jakke
I agree. First thing first and that is the more valuable is our work, our business, our means of living and not our social media fans and followers. I don’t remember that I become a die-hard fan to a famous celebrity. Yes, sometimes I become more interested with them, I want to know and hear news about them but not to the extent that I wanted to see them in person or even followed them in their respective social media sites. Because I always asked myself if the slightly famous people actually read the email sent by a fan to them? Do they really use that site for real or just for their publicity?! I don’t know.