Anyone Else Tired of Social Media?

At a recent conference, a group was standing around and someone (who shall remain anonymous) bravely spoke up and stated a fact many of us have been feeling, thinking, and trying to figure out. "I really am tired of this whole social media thing." There was a bit of silence, but the nodding heads proved that many of us were in agreement.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that most of us in this space, RBC frequenters, unConference or Social Recruiting Conference attendees have been tackling Social Media - going at it - for quite a while now. Many for three years or longer. And the surprise is always there when a session is filled with many that have never even logged onto a social media site, let alone dig the Twitter scene.

It hasn't been easy, as a matter of fact, almost weekly the rules change. LinkedIn has started to look an awful lot like Facebook and the home page of Facebook looks like a Twitter stream and Plaxo lurks in the corner like some creepy cross breed of Facebook and LinkedIn. And the "keep up" is exhausting, a concerted effort to stay active and keep up with the changes is a must or is it?

I used to spend a couple hours a day cruising through Twitter and other sites, worried I might miss the next big announcement or an opportunity to respond to something hi-larious or off-the-charts. But something amazing started to happen about six months ago. Work got busy, then it got busier. And one might theorize that because I was keeping up, because I was aware of what was going on, surely this is why I became so busy. Perhaps, but the busy began to limit my social media time spend. And it was a good thing, I have learned how to quickly skim the sites for anything of interest or that might affect me or my job / company.

Effective time spend must be budgeted, just like effective money spend. If you don't measure the give / loss, how can you possibly understand the gain? Measuring the ROI of social media time spend is next to impossible for its reach is really unknowable. The only thing you can really measure is the time spent engaging, thus the time NOT spent doing something else, perhaps something more effective like talking to potential clients / customers face-to-face. Novel concept.

Social media is a great icebreaker, but it isn't the party. That's not always so easy to remember.

by rayannethorn

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Craig Silverman on September 9, 2010 at 11:00am

Social Media keeps me better connected to my contacts and I like it. For recruiters these new networking tools have become part of our daily routine but need to be managed so that we don't get carried away and loose focus. I like checking in early in the am or late at night, maybe at lunch but try to stay away during key times when it's better to be interacting directly with my team or my clients.

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Permalink Reply by pam claughton on September 9, 2010 at 12:14pm

Social media is not the next great thing in recruiting, at all. It can be a huge time sink if you let it and when I was first finding my way around twitter I lost far too much time. I spend as little time as possible with social media, but I do use it somewhat to leverage what I'm already doing. I'll post status updates on LinkedIn which copy to Twitter, to get the word out about new searches. I see social media as much more of a branding tool than a recruiting one, it's a good way to build awareness of who you are and what you do, but odds are when you have a difficult search, it's not going to land you a top qualified candidate. When I need to find someone fast I go outbound, on the phone and email...not social media.

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Permalink Reply by Maria DiLisio on September 10, 2010 at 1:05pm

Great thought provoking discussion! And kudos on the bold title! I myself have a love/hate relationship with all things Social Media. It has been both a friend and foe. Friend when it helps me uncover hidden gems, learn new tools, or make helpful connections. Foe when it gives me a false sense of accomplishment, or sends me down twisting turning rabbit holes in search of that elusive bit of information. It can be such a time drain! Sometimes Social Media feels like a golden carrot...I know there's so much juicy information out there, but it's often just out of reach. It holds both an illusion and allure to it.

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Permalink Reply by Pamela Bovaird on November 21, 2010 at 8:09pm

Depends on how you are using Social Media. For Recruitingblogs it is absolutely great. I would imagine they have gained a lot from this social media site.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Alfred on November 21, 2010 at 9:23pm

I love it ... Here we have some great insight by Rayanne questioning Social Media and its usefulness from that we get 35 plus responses from users, readers, members giving feedback as to why its either useful, a waste of time, unproductive, a marketing positioning tool, Recruiters wasting their time when they should be recruiting ...etc...

and, we are doing all of this.... and sharing all of these thoughts ... from folks across the Continent including Canada ... In a Social Media Universe ...

Damn that bloody Social Media it Kills me every time ...