The Upside of Social Networking Addictions

I've been on Facebook now for almost a year, but my social media addiction started with twitter. I'd spend hours and hours laughing and tweeting...retweeting and laughing some more.

True story: The Boy (my son) once told me, "I wish I had the mom who worked at [previous employer] instead of the mom who works at twitter." Bless his heart, he thought twitter was my job!

Before migrating my addiction over to Facebook, I wanted to make sure I'd positioned myself on twitter. Not as someone who was there to self-promote, but to use it for what I believe it's truly meant for - taking online connections and turning them into real-life offline relationships. Twitter lead to the opportunity for me to speak to eWomen Network in Oakland, CA, as a result of meeting Ann Evanston online. It's been a couple of years since I sent my first tweet and I'm still amazed at the number of people who still miss the point. They continue to talk about only themselves, push their services and affiliate products, and blast sales pitches.

Now that I'm comfortable with using Facebok, I'm spending more time on twitter again. Last week I was on and happened to see a tweet announcing a chat for the upcoming Texas Conference for Women. The hashtag was #TexasWomen. I hadn't participated in tweetchat in a long time and decided to join the conversation. I was glad I did. Although I don't have plans to attend the 2010 conference, I had fun enteracting with the speakers and past conference attendees. That experience alone made me want to go to the live event and I've already put next week's chat on my calendar. I also gained a few more like-minded followers in the process.

I'm sitting in Starbucks writing this post and couldn't help but overhear two men talking about twitter. One guy was telling the other all the great benefits of being active on twitter and the other fellow was rebutting and saying what I've heard so many others say, "I just don't get it."

I'm not here to sell you on it one way or another. Not all social networking works for everyone and I don't subscribe to the belief that you have to be plugged into everything or you're not "doing it right". Find what works best for you and stick with it consistently.

Regardless to what you choose, remember this: Join the conversation - it's a dialogue. Forget about adding value and just show up and give it.

You can see my latest tweets over there to the right below my picture. If we haven't connected there yet, you can follow me at @iHiredMe.

Photo credit: xotoko