How much SM do you imbibe?

Had an interesting chat with Luc Levesque at last night’s excellent DemoCamp event about how many SM streams we follow. As with most readers of this blog, we saw the value in keeping up with many RSS feeds, Twitterers, LinkedIn updates, etc., but also recognized the huge time commitment, and sometimes questioned the ROI from a purely business perspective. The discussion made me realize that, as an entrepreneur, I have two very different answers to that question:

  1. When I’m "externally focused", i.e., when the priority is deciding what the next killer feature should be, trying to get coverage, land customers/partners, etc., I follow a large number of SM streams diligently.
  2. When I’m "internally focused", i.e., when the priority is on product development, hiring/training, etc., I drastically reduce the number of SM streams I follow (5 to 10 RSS feeds, check Twitter every few days, and ignore the majority of individual items).

I’ve found that this works for me… anyone else?

By Nick Desbarats

One Response to “How much SM do you imbibe?”

  1. Natasha D'Souza  on October 20th, 2009

    Part of my daily routine is to take a peek at my various sm sites and see what’s going on.

    Once a week I blog, post updates to my Fan page and status updates on LinkedIn.

    I also participate in some of the discussions online but less frequently.

    As for Twitter it’s every couple of days. My personal fb gets updated fairly frequently.

    My usage does go up significantly when I am doing research or client work.

    When I am travelling or just plain busy I do drop off the face of the earth so to speak. But I am back online when things calm down.

    It does take up a fair bit of time however I do see the benefits on doing this.