I have had and do have my own cycles with participating in social media, podcasting and all things online.

If you are finding that too much social interaction is interfering with the business of making media, paying the bills, or being with family. Clarify your priorities to yourself, then to the people involved, and move forward with that decision in mind.

Part of the success of surviving it is to recognize it and actively focus and execute a realistic plan in returning to it / overcoming it.

Then with your decision made, and your plan as your guide, re-enter the community on your terms. Nobody can fault you on your interactions in that respect.

In short:
- decide what matters (offline & online) and rank your interactions
- create a plan (or schedule guideline) on which interactions you intend on participating and continuing.
- execute and re-enter the community.

In the 3 or 4 years that I’ve been active in the social media landscape I’ve had a couple of re-focusing moments. What might have made sense when you started vLogging, or blogging might not make as much sense now.

LinkedIn is a great example of a site worth re-evaluating and refocusing on. While 2 years ago you might not have given it the focus, today with so many business opportunities on the site; it’s worth dedicating some time to. Much like how Twitter use to be great for personal communication has become less dominate in the landscape when compared to dedicating time to your Facebook community.

Keep at it and make this online experience work at your terms. Good luck.

Yep. I tend to go through “phases” of social media fatigue (now it has a name!) about once a year – sometimes more often, sometimes less. I’m in the midst of my longest-to-date phases of it right now, actually – although, since my 7th blogiversary is coming up on the 17th, I’m feeling obligated to write about *why*. I mentioned some of it on a recent BlogHer thread, but basically there are a lot of different things conspiring to make me not so enthusiastic about social media at the moment.

This is not a disparagement of the medium – I hate it when ppl decide something isn’t right for them and then denounce it wholesale for everyone – but just that I need to refocus, re-center, and concentrate on getting back to my roots of using social media for *me*. I won’t ever stop blogging – I’ve always been a writer – but every once in I while I need these “re-centerings.”

This was why I deleted @thejenntafur on twitter

This is why I am doing things like recommended in spurts. It’s too much information overload at times for me.

Some people can manage it well and do it all the time whereas I cannot. But it is my personality where I will go 100% an experience burn out. It will be more ideal for me to check in maybe once a week for about 1 hour and that is it. Living like this for me has been hard but it was something I wanted to explore.

I am glad I met great people like yourself.

Time for me to take another break! xoox

xoxo

I’d write something longer, but I’m too fatigued from blog overload.

Okay, so perhaps not funny but it is certainly accurate. For me the fatigue is not only about my own content creation, it’s also about being just too oversaturated to engage with *other* people’s content. Part of the whole social media fun for me is commenting/conversing with other people – especially if we have divergent views.

To the original point though, about the fatigue that leads to a slow down in orignal content creation … I believe that the very last point you make in this post about stepping back to refocus and evaluate the way in which you use the tools … I think that’s spot on.

For me, when a new tool arrives I generally check it out and there’s always that “bright and shiny” newness thing that keeps it around a bit, but then most of those tools fade off and I find myself back at the core things I use. Over time, though some new tools do make their way into my everyday diet. How I use those new tools and even how I use those staples of social media, evolves over time … and it’s only when I’ve forced myself to take a brief break that I’ve been able get a clear sense of the best means to publish things …

I wonder then about the longevity of social media engagement by the masses. It seems that those who’ve commented have experienced a type of fatigue at one moment or another at varying degrees. I would assume that those who’ve jumped into this conversation participate in SM at a moderate to high level like I do.

What about the general public then? Those who are getting involved because it’s the latest trend? I’m not suggesting that social media will go away, but it could very be that Twitter could easily become tomorrow’s MySpace, and replaced by the next hot trendy site.

These thoughts have moved away from my original post, however I think that it’s worth discussing because I believe a lot of people are now turning to SM because it’s a cool way to connect at the moment.

I’m glad to know it’s name. I’ve been experiencing this myself and have recently questioned whether it was worth staying on FB, MySpace, Twitter, etc. Keeping up with all of these sites have scattered my focus a bit and like you, I too have not blogged much. At times I feel as if I’m hearing too many voices and not my own and during those times I must back away. It’s great for meeting folks but, in my case, I need to trim some of the exposure.

[...] DRAMA. Who knows. What I do know is, at the moment I’m refocusing and re-centering (as I said at Amani’s today). I need that once in a while. This blog was started for ME and no one else, and as such [...]

These thoughts have moved away from my original post, however I think that it’s worth discussing because I believe a lot of people are now turning to SM because it’s a cool way to connect at the moment.

I think that’s true of any “hot new thing” though – a bunch of people start doing it because it’s the cool thing to do, then eventually the buzz dies down, they get over it, and the thing in question is left w/ the devotees who were doing it to begin with, along w/ maybe a few others who discovered it amid the buzz and found it was a good fit for them.

[...] busy working life.  But a cursory glance out of the window reveals that I’m not the only [...]