Social Media Addiction: Is It Taking over Your Life?

Social media is becoming an obsession in many peoples lives and is consuming more and more of their time each day.

Unfortunately, many people are spending insane amounts of hours scrolling through Instagram, Facebook, reading news articles, subscribing to newsletters, writing blog post after blog post, sending messages to their network, tweeting compulsively, and are losing sight of what is really important: taking care of your business and your personal life.

Here are a few pointers to nip this disturbing trend in the bud:

Choose Life

Some people are staying up until the wee hours of the morning fiddling with social media and getting four hours of sleep or less. Sooner or later this will catch up with you, as this quote from an article in the San Francisco Chronicle states:

A study of almost 7,000 Alameda County residents, over a nine-year period, found that people who routinely slept six or fewer hours a night had about 70% higher risk of dying than did people of similar age who slept seven or eight hours a night.

The next time it’s three o’clock in the morning and you wonder if you should go to sleep or watch a few more videos, go to sleep. Choose life.

Social Media is Just a Tool

A few weeks ago I wrote about three of the biggest Internet marketing time wasters. Many bloggers also waste too much time on checking their sites stats instead of creating value.

Social media is just a tool in your promotional arsenal and not an end in itself. If you find yourself devoting 80% of your time to social media and 20% to actually working on your business, it’s time to stop and reverse that trend.

Stop Preaching to the Choir

One problem with social media is that by the very nature of the tagging system, you end up hanging around like-minded people most of the time.

This can be good at the beginning when you need to establish yourself in your topical community, but later it becomes counter-productive: most of these people are your peers and competitors, not necessarily your customers.

Take a look at your social media routine and make sure you’re not spending a lot of time with people that are not your target customers.

Pick Your Battles

Each social media site typically has its own audience.

Facebook started as a hangout for college students but is now used by most people on the planet on a daily basis, whereas LinkedIn’s audience is mostly professionals.

Rather than targeting all social media sites, experiment with several of them at the beginning and then focus on those that produce more traffic and better conversion rates for your business.

Use the Gym Workout Approach

If you’ve ever worked out at a gym, you know that personal trainers recommend that you work on your upper body one day, and on your lower body on another. They also recommend to rest every other day or so.

You can use the same approach in your social media campaign: write blog posts on one day, research posts and send messages to your network on another, read blog posts and subscribe to them on another, etc.

The idea is not to do everything every single day.

Also, remember to pick one or two days a week to work out, spend time with your family, and don’t do anything internet-related. Don’t worry: the world will not come to an end, your blog won’t disappear and your readers won’t jump from the tenth floor.

If you liked this post or find it useful, please share it on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. And then, please go to sleep.