Keeping it simple with social

I had a rare child-free moment with my wife last night and the opportunity to talk about some of the things that we've both been thinking recently. Namely how to go about making our lives much more simple.  About being more appreciative of where we are in life, of spending less time working, more time with the children, about stripping back the way we live and not worrying about keeping up with the Jones's as the saying goes.  It was an incredibly liberating conversation and it made me think about applying the same principles to social media.

In an age of increasing automation and technology, which I'm as guilty of using as anyone else, there's a feeling that we're not adding value, but just creating more noise across social media platforms.  Gary Vaynerchuck has mentioned that he doesn't think Twitter can survive as a viable platform unless something is done to cut out the banal noise and clutter.  Facebook's algorithm already tries to cut out the white noise and only deliver what users actually want to see.  So what if we applied the same stripping back principles to our online lives?

I've only really begun thinking about this over night, but I'm convinced there's something to it.  It's made me think that all the automation may well make social media professionals like me, appear incredibly lazy.  That potential customers will avoid us because of this massive screen of automated messages that prevent them from reaching the real us.  That actually, as social media professionals, we're exploiting technology but not actually being social.

During a recent video with Stuart Morrison from Mr Metric we came up with the mantra that social media should represent the triumph of 'technique over technology' and discussed how human nature and our propensity to be social animals should be at the heart of our story-telling strategy.  I think it's time to start putting all of this into practice, and those of us that work in social media should be the first to make the move.  I'm going to start now and I'll keep you updated with my progress, successes and defeats along the way.

It's time for a change, what do you think?  Are you with me?