Blog Post: Prioritizing Media Consumption

Recently, I was invited to participate in webinar presentation on social media to a group of solution engineers at SAP. While we love each and every one of our clients (both paying and pro-bono) but it was really exciting to share some of our knowledge with such a large and established company for the afternoon.

As happy as I was with how the presentation went, I love waiting for all the followup questions to come rolling through my inbox once attendees have a while to marinate on their newly found social media enlightenment even more.

One of the most common questions that I get after presentations like this, no matter the audience, is “All these new tools are great, but how the heck am I supposed to make time for all this stuff?!”

My answer is, and always has been, to focus on value. Look at the value that any particular newsletter or magazine subscription, professional association membership, twitter follower, RSS feed, podcast, LinkedIn group or forum discussion offers.

In any single day, you have a finite amount of time that you can designate to media consumption (or production if you have graduated to that point). Rather than struggling to get through five email newsletters, 20 blog feeds, two LinkedIn groups and the rest of that other stuff that pays the bills, look at the value that each one contributes and how efficiently each medium addresses its purpose.

Whether it is a webcast series, email newsletter, local networking event or anything else, many people are too information hungry to realize how much overlap and wasted time is spent trying to pull in the most valuable information from as many places in order to do their job to the best of their abilities.

Take inventory of everything that you consume (intellectually) every day. Did you already read that story about the exploding iPod on twitter yesterday, only to find it again in an email newsletter this morning? Cut the fat. Don’t fear that “unsubscribe” button. Your time is valuable. Treat it that way.

If you are honest with yourself about the time investment and ultimate return in value that each provides, you’ll likely find that many social media tools will replace the traditional tools that you have been using all along to do your job, and much more effectively.

For example, Twitter has been a godsend for cutting down on the mess of email newsletter subscriptions and getting and sharing information fast, but it will never completely replace the value of face-to-face networking with other marketing and PR pros.

Rather than treating social media as another time suck on top of an already busy workload, give it a chance with a level playing field among the rest of your other traditional information troughs.  You may be surprised.