Learning Ecosystems

How to Navigate Social Media (and Avoid Information Overload) — Tom Kuhlmann

(Below is an excerpt from Tom’s posting.)

Here are five simple ways to manage all of the information available to you.  I also did a quick screencast that walks you through some of these tips.

• Use a feed reader to subscribe to the resources.  Many of the social media tools and sites have an RSS feed.  By subscribing via RSS feed, you can access everything from one site rather than having to visit each site that interests you.
• Filter by keywords.  Some of the people I follow in Twitter post more than ten times a day.  It’s hard to keep up with all of that.  Besides, there are usually only a few things that interest me.  So I tune them out.  I don’t even look at their posts.  Instead, I create keyword filters.  This helps me get rid of the noise and only see those things that interest me.
• Find information that’s already aggregated.  Don’t feel like doing any of that sorting or subscribing?  No biggie.  Just find someone else who does it and go to that site.  For example, if you’re active in Facebook and use Articulate products, become a fan of Articulate.  A lot of the community news and resources are available there and that saves you from having to do it yourself.
• Focus on what’s practical.  Even if you do all of the sorting and filtering, it’s still a lot to handle.  Personally, I’m more interested in practical applications of ideas and not all of the conversation.  So I tend to pay more attention to tutorials, examples, and demos than I do news stories and conversations.
• Tune out.  OK, this kind of goes contrary to the whole social media thing, but who cares.  Don’t worry about being on top of all of the chatter. As a wise man one said, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”  Sometimes you’re better off tuning out and staying focused, then you are getting anxious and trying to stay on top of everything.  Just tune in when you want.