Yesterday we talked about the social media tipping point and what some folks do to make sure they can balance all of the content, events, beta invites and more. Well later in the day I saw a wonderful description of what I think I actually have, a Social Media Headache (SMH). I completely stole this from Daniel Johnson's Twitter post. It was simply too perfect and I'm happy that I caught it since the one area I've had the most trouble keeping up with is Twitter.

Rather than take two aspirins and call you in the morning, I've taken the SMH equivalent by taking some actions, some very similar to Bryan Person who commented yesterday that:

A few months ago, I was trying to attend about one social media event per week â€" but I found even that was usually too much. I often wrestle with balancing my enthusiasm for outside projects/meetups and the need for 1) downtime 2) quality family time. I don't have the magic solution here, but when I do feel overload coming on, I try and get honest with myself â€" do I really need to go to this meetup? do I really need to be following 300 RSS feeds? do I really need to beta-test and blog about yet another social network? â€" and find enough "no"s to ensure I stay sane.

Bryan is completely right, sometimes you do have to 'just say no' to actually keep your sanity.

Todd Defren, one of my fave PR bloggers, commented in part:

Sometimes you just gotta "Mark All As Read." The reader will be full again tomorrow - and anything that mighta' been HUGE will be re-covered as a meme anyway. You can be a Social Media geek without being social: I decided a long time ago that my wife & kids were the people who deserved as much of my free time as possible.

All great advice and why, in fact, social media is such a wonderful tool to communicate and seek advice from people I respect and trust. But here are the practical rules I've put in place to minimize my case of SMH:

1) Max Number of RSS Feeds Subscribed to = 85 (down from 320 and NOT including blogs monitored for clients)
2) Max Number of people following on Twitter = 275 (down from 300 and now at 270, to give myself growing room)
3) Average Number of Monthly events to attend = 2
4) Accepted beta invites per month = 2 (but of course this all depends on applicability to my day job)

These are the steps I've personally taken, I understand they may seem odd to you, but social media is personal if it is anything.

/kff