1 Pare down. You do not need to join more than a few social networks to do most of what you need to do in your work. What are the core networks you use on a daily basis? Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube…? The rest you can ignore and not feel your work — or life — will suffer.
2 Turn off. How many pings do you get a day? Turn off the ones you don’t care about. Now turn off the ones that are just “good to know,” because I’m sure you cannot point to one that has totally changed your business or your life.
3 Designate time. If you are checking your emails, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of your networks more than several times daily, you are being controlled by your impulses to check, check, check to make sure you haven’t missed anything. If it isn’t your job to monitor the social mediasphere for a client, you’re falling into the trap of “always more and never enough.” Be discriminating and methodical.
4 Filter Better. Narrow your searches terms to a few mission critical terms, and be more specific to cut through the clutter.
5 Go cold turkey. If you’re really struggling with managing your information intakes, just stop. Go a few days completely disconnected.
None of us will die without social media. But life could pass us by if we let it take over our lives.