Can We Go Overboard with Social Networking?

I sell resources and workbooks to educators online. That means my web sites for doing so need to be found. The standard advice is that social networking is one way to publicize my sites and help them get found by Google and other search engines. So, I joined Facebook, where I have a personal page and a page for my business, Barb's People Builders, where I notify interested people about new products and specials. Next came Twitter, where my user name is, of course, "barbsbooks." I had already started a blog for my business, Of Cabbages and Kings: Random Thoughts of an Internet Bookseller, and I thought that would pretty well take care of the blogging part of social networking. So much for social networking. Or so I thought.

So far social networking seemed manageable. I concentrated on my main selling web sites, updating with new products and price changes. I posted to my blog, and tweeted the links of new posts. At the beginning I only had a personal Facebook page, so I didn't use it for business, and just kept up with real world friends. Then things seemed to start snowballing. I was getting Facebook friend requests from booksellers whose names I did not recognize from the bookselling discussion lists on which I participated. Many people lurk, and since I posted often back in those days, they knew me, but I didn't really know them. I knew they were booksellers because we had mutual friends who were booksellers.

I had at first determined I would only accept friend requests from people I actually "knew," whether in the real or virtual worlds. I was not into just collecting friends to see how many I could gather. It was the booksellers who changed that. Some I "knew" pretty well, since I had worked with them in our booksellers cooperative, tomfolio.com. I had no problem accepting them as friends. But then when the friend requests came from the other booksellers I did not know, the situation got stickier, because they knew me and I didn't want to hurt their feelings. I still have some of these in friend request limbo. On Twitter, I didn't care who followed me. Anyone was welcome, but I didn't follow back anyone I saw no good reason to follow. As far as I was concerned, my social networking was adequate. I concentrated on my web site and keeping my customers happy, and posting a new blog about every week.

One day on Twitter I started getting tweets about a site called Squidoo. Sounded kind of strange and unbusiness-like to me, so I didn't pay too much attention to it. Then one day, due to a chance online encounter with a lensmaster, I decided to sign up. I started to write lenses under the name BarbRad. This introduced me to online writing, and I thrived in the Squidoo ocean, but it also took away from the time I spent on my main business. I also had added a personal blog on my garden, but I only worked on it during gardening season.

Then I joined the RocketMoms, "the smartest women on the web," a group of Squidoo lensmasters who were networking together to learn to build better lenses so they could earn more. (RocketMoms was dropped by Squidoo in 2011 and replaced with RocketSquids, which I'm not part of.) RocketMoms had their own networking groups on Ning, and I joined several of them. It was in discussions on these Ning groups that I learned about Zazzle, another great creative outlet with the potential of increasing my on-line income with my photographs. So I opened a Zazzle store and used Squidoo lenses to publicize it and sell products I and others had made. Though the RocketMoms I also found out about Qondio and HubPages, other writing sites I decided to join. My network got bigger, since the writing sites are also networks that make others more aware of your online presence. As the participation in all these sites started to grow, I heard about Gather, a sort of combination writing and social network, and I joined that. A real-world friend I saw at a reunion told me she won't join Facebook because she is a security expert and that Facebook has very lax security, She told me she used LinkedIn, so I joined that. It caters to business networking.

As discussions with the RocketMoms continued, the names of other sites started to pop up -- Wizzley, Amplify, and Posterous, which I just joined. Wizzley is a writing site that is like a cross between the best of Squidoo and HubPages. Amplify and Posterous I still don't have completely figured out, but they seem to be mini-blogging sites that will let you post what you write or email to most of your other social networking sites, and also to your blogs. But to use them that way, you have to allow them to have your user name and password and access to your data at all times.

In this past couple of weeks, I have begun receiving requests from almost all my RocketMom friends to become connections on yet another site -- Branch Out, which appears to be for professional networking on Facebook. Now my wall is over half-filled with these Branch Out requests. So far I've resisted joining. I think I've about reached my networking limit -- especially since I also just joined Nezie.com, which I'm still trying to make work for me. It is designed to build you affiliate stores almost automatically and incorporate all your favorite affiliate programs. So far it's a bit too automatic for me because I'm a control freak.

The main reason most people use social networking sites, besides keeping up with real world friends they don't often get to see, is to promote their businesses or their writing by getting the word out about new writing, new products, changes in the company, etc. The idea is that the more people who know about you, the better the chance your work will be read, your products will be bought, your sites will be visited. For me, that is the important thing -- expanding the number of new people who become aware of you and your activities.

It would seem, then, that if people in one network, such as Facebook or RocketMoms already know about every new piece of writing you publish, that would be sufficient. Let's take as a given that all your Facebook friends and Twitter Followers won't see everything you post on those sites. Then maybe they will see something you post on another network or two they follow. But when is the point of no further value reached in the number of networks that the same 20 or 30 people all belong to?

Let's say I write a new hub. I post it to Twitter and to Facebook. I might put a link to it in one or more of my blogs. I might also post the link to RedGage, Best Reviewer or She Told Me. (Yes, I belong to those sites, too, where people share links, videos, blogs, and photos with each other to make extra income while promoting their work. Feel free to join through my referral links if these sites are new to you.) Most of my on-line friends from Squidoo and HubPages also use these sites to publicize their work. RocketMoms also share many of the same links in their Ning groups. So If one of my RocketMom friends posts her link in a Ning group, then on Facebook, Twitter, or RedGage, I'm going to see it. Chances are she will also post it on LinkedIn, She Told Me, Posterous, or Amplify, where I probably won't see it, because I don't get notifications for most of those sites unless someone comments on something I've posted. Were I to join Branch Out, I would see the link again. Yet I only need to click once to see the blog, hub, or lens. If I post my link, that same group will also see my link multiple times in different places. Would all of them be necessary? Or is it overkill?

I'm beginning to think I've bitten off more social networking than I can keep up with. I'm so busy social networking I rarely have time to write -- if I keep up with it. The more places I have to post links to my writing, the less time I have to build my business and actually write. How about you? Do you think it's better to join lots of social networks hoping it will really expand your circle of people who see your work or find out about your business? Is it the back links from all those sites which make joining every possible site worthwhile? Or does all the promotion through social networking keep you from producing more quality work? Which social networks have you found most useful to promote your writing or your other business ventures? Which have been more trouble than they are worth? Knowing what you do now, would you handle your online social networking differently if you were starting over today? I'm hoping you will use the comments section to discuss this, since I suspect I'm not the only one with this dilemma. Maybe we can learn from each other how to arrange or rearrange our social networking priorities.