10 Social Media Resolutions for 2009

The start of the New Year is a time for planning new ventures, getting organized, and of course creating resolutions and goals for the coming year. One area of my life which I hope to improve upon, streamline, and make more effective, is the realm of social media. New social media applications are amazing communication and networking tools, but can be tough to keep up with. The following are ten goals I’ve laid out for myself for the New Year which you may also find helpful.

1. Lose Weight – Slim down your daily routine by unsubscribing to some of those less-than-helpful RSS feeds in your news reader. We all have these – the news outlets which used to be gold mines of inspiration but have since lost their direction, or the plucky new blogs whose authors now mainly issue apologies for not posting. Take a look at who you’re following on Twitter and unsubscribe to the people who do nothing but self-promote, whine, or otherwise irritate you as you scan for relevant tweets from your core group of friends.
2. Get in Shape – Shape up the virtual you by updating your profile for the New Year. Have you changed jobs? Achieved any goals personally or at work? Be sure to list these on your LinkedIn, Facebook, and other profiles. And upload a new photo to your social networks which better represents how you want to be viewed for this next year, whether that’s a recent pic, your mug from the high school yearbook, a baby photo, or an anime avatar.
3. Make New Friends! – Kick off the new year by doing a little bit of online networking - making new connections is always fun and you never know where it may lead. Many social networks make it easy on you by providing suggestions of “people you may know”. Browse through these recommendations, conduct a search for your professional field or interest area, ie. “librarian”, “writer”, books”, or opt-in to connect the social network to your email address book to search for your existing friends in that community.
4. Simplify Your Life – Sign up with some personal syndication services and save time by posting in one place and publishing to many. Through websites like Ping.fm, you can type in status updates or “tweets” which you can opt to have posted to your profiles on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many other social networks automatically. For media such as photos, audio files, and video, check out Pixelpipe which will simultaneously post your uploaded media to Flickr, Facebook, Shutterfly, Twitter, PhotoBucket, and several others including your blog.
5. Create Good Habits – Social media tools are easy to use but tough to master, they take steady cultivation and commitment. Determine how much time you have to spend in this area and then integrate that into your weekly routine – decide to spend 30 minutes every Friday afternoon on Facebook or other social network, carve out 25 minutes each morning over coffee to read the blogs you’ve subscribed to in your news reader, set aside the third Tuesday of each month to upload photos to Flickr, etc.
6. Get Organized – Many of us have multiple email accounts, wikis and websites we’ve created, social networks we belong to, and web destinations we visit daily. Keep yourself sane by organizing all of these links in a start page such as Protopage, Netvibes, or iGoogle instead of having to recall URLs on a regular basis. You can make your start page your default home page on your browser and also feed in other useful personal information which will greet you each time you open it such as personal calendar schedules, Netflix queues, delicious bookmarks, etc.
7. Present the “New You” – Nearly every social site has a place for you to post a brief bio summarizing yourself in 2-3 sentences - a digital elevator pitch about who you are, what you do, and how you’re great at it. These can be tough to come up with off-the-cuff and for this reason you’ll often see these sections left blank or with clearly outdated information. Sit down and think about the best two or three things that you do and make a list of your accomplishments in these areas. Think about how to present these endeavors in the best light and use that to craft an impressive description of yourself which you can post to all of your social networks.
8. Take a Chance – Use the momentum of the New Year to try something new. Start that new blog you’ve been nagging yourself about for the past 6 months; give online publishing a shot by starting an open access journal; join a social network you’ve been both intimidated and intrigued by; give Twitter a go. Now’s the time to jump in, before the regular routine of the year sets in.
9. Ask for Help – Many of us spend loads of time making valuable connections on social networking sites and then forget to tap into our pool of resources when we need help. Reach out to your connections this year when you’re beta testing your new website, when you need a second set of eyes for an article you’re writing, or to ask for professional recommendations on sites such as LinkedIn, etc.
10. Treat Yourself - Reward yourself for all of your hard work. If you’ve just uploaded all of your photos to Flickr, treat yourself to some fun cards or stickers on Moo.com, or create a music video from your photos on Animoto. If you’ve just spent the afternoon blogging, spend 30 minutes laughing at LOLCats or reading celebrity gossip on Gawker.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Guides, Lists, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.