An Ultimate Guide to Social Media Simplification

by Andy DeSoto on July 9, 2008

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs

Face it: in the digital age, your time is one of your most precious commodities.  Never in the known history of the world has a culture needed to perceive, process, and act on information to the extent each and every one of us must today.

Unfortunately for us, though, the same tools that bring human beings together over generations, cultures, and continents—social networking and social media sites—can devour hours and hours of our limited spare time.  As our involvement in different services and sites gets more involved and complex, it’s easy to spend exponentially more energy online if our habits go unchecked.

How do we simplify our social network existences and ably manage our valuable time?  I’ve compiled a list of some great practical, philosophical, and experimental resources on how to be more efficient, smarter, and effective when working with social media and social networking:

General simplification

Get productive with social media (and stay sane) | Lifehacker

How much time do you spend on social media? | ReadWriteWeb

Social media networking and ROI: How to maximize value and minimize cost | DoshDosh

Scoble has a productivity problem | Scobleizer

The social media time crisis | Colin Walker

Steps toward social simplification | One Little Cog

Don’t waste time on social networking! | Money.Power.Wisdom.

10 simple steps to social media success in 2008 | Search Engine Land

Avoiding information and conversation overload from social media | Search Engine Guide

Social media efficiency – avoiding social media procrastination |

Six productivity tips to use social media | Academic Productivity

Spend much time on social networking? | Affordable Internet Marketing

Social network pruning heuristic series | Andy DeSoto

Aggregators and cross-posters

20 ways to aggregate your social networking profiles | Mashable

FriendFeed Tips Series | Louis Gray

A simple and easy way to manage all of your social networking needs | Snakeyes’ Confession of a Dangerous Mind

Web 2.0 inefficiency | Publishing 2.0

Facebook

Myspace/Facebook best practices | The Student Affairs Blog

12 ways to use Facebook professionally | Web Worker Daily

The corporate worker’s guide to evaluating a Facebook profile | Pimp Your Work

Twitter

My essential Twitter tools | Jeremiah Owyang

35 Twitter tips from 35 Twitter users | Problogger

Get smarter and more productive on Twitter | Lifehacker

Did I miss something?  Feel free to shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment and I’ll add it in.  The more resources at hand, the better!

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