My friend Stacey Alexander wrote a piece about Social Media Slavery. With a title like that, why wouldn't anyone read that? That's solid SEO gold.
Stacey writes the idea much better than I do, but the gist of it is there is so much pressure to be online that it is like slavery because we are so tied to a computer or smartphone.
While I think the title is even more over the top than something I would write, the pressure is still there, especially for those of us who run successful blogs and websites or work in a social media function. Customers want answers. Bosses want results. Users want more adorable videos of Corgis on a treadmill.
You can't do everything at once for everyone. That's just how life is. You need to define where you are at the moment, what you're doing, and where your priorities are. And sometimes, Facebook needs to take a backseat when that happens.
If you're geting paid to be a social media person, that makes things different. Emergencies arise. Products get bad reviews. Still, you get paid to keep that phone on you and be connected. The rest of us are just schmucks with iPhones and no life beyond the Twitter stream.
Does anyone need to be tied to social media? No. But it's not like we need an emancipation proclamation from Facebook either. Set your boundaries and stick to them. I don't tweet on weekends. Use utilities that can schedule posts like Hootsuite to give the illusion that you are there. And keep posting as many adorable Corgi videos as possible.