I must get dozens of emails per week about following someone on Twitter or joining as a friend on Facebook. I don’t have a Twitter account and I no longer have a Facebook account.
If you listen to some people, they would say I am stupid, crazy, and insane not to have a Twitter account where I could get thousands of people to follow me. I closed my Facebook account about a month ago.
Why? Isn’t Social Networking supposed to be the #1 phenomenon going on right now?
I’ll agree they are big… just look at their Alexa rankings. But, there are several reasons why I won’t be getting an account any time soon:
1) I don’t have the time. I only have so many hours in a day, and if I have to add one more thing to my plate for me to do, I will push the things that are priorities for me away. I am already busy enough as it is. I don’t want to take 2 minutes and Tweet on Twitter. Facebook is really cool, but FB actually takes quite a bit of time. I had about 200 friends before I closed my FB account, and I got back several hours a week. I don’t really think these advances in technology are saving me time at all.
2) I lose focus. The man who chases 2 rabbits will get none. I had a friend tell me that back in college. I was actually going rabbit hunting for the first time. He told me to focus on one rabbit at a time. Good advice. The problem for me is… when I begin to divide my time up between different activities of my business and my personal life, I have come to the conclusion that less is better.
If I have 4 things I am trying to do, it’s not like I carve my time up into 4 nice portions, 25%, 25%, 25%, 25%. For me, it’s more like 20%, 5%, 10%, and 15%… which only adds up to 50% because the other 50% is lost due to lack of focus on one thing. The more my focus is divided the less productive I am. I only have to take a look at my monthly income to know when I was laser focused and when my focused was divided among too many things.
Opening up a Twitter account and doing things like Facebook only divides my time up more. And, I ain’t gonna do it.
3) I don’t want to put my eggs in the Twitter basket. I have been marketing online for about 11 years now… which would qualify me as a veteran. I’ve been online for 14 years. Especially over the last 4-6 years, I have seen many things come and go, fads rise and fall. I am not saying Facebook and Twitter are fads, but I believe their long-term benefit to any energy, money, and time I would give them to better my business is still suspect. All it takes is a change in the Twitter terms of service as people get in and learn how to manipulate the system that all of the Twitter love comes to an end.
If I am putting my marketing eggs in any basket, it is the things that have proven themselves to be effective over the life of my marketing experience. That is where I focus most of my energy for building my business and where I will continue to do so. If Twitter is still going strong in a few years, then maybe I was wrong and it might be something to look into.
4) Twitter and Facebook = less freedom. This goes along with #1 and #2. One of the overall goals of what I do is to give myself and my family the time and financial freedom that would not otherwise be available. Becoming a master Tweeter and a friend to thousands on Facebook actually steals some of that freedom I have worked so hard for over the last 6 years.
5) I’d rather go fishing. Or go golfing, go to Disney, go on safari in Kenya, feed some of the folks in the cardboard village in Renosa, Mexico, or go walk through Stonebriar Mall in north Dallas with my family. There are many other things I would rather do than to find one more thing to do on the computer. I love my computer… but it’s not my first love.
Anyway, you get the idea. Twitter and FB are great things… but right now my life is just fine without them. It was fine yesterday and will probably be just fine tomorrow as well. It’s not about the money. For me, it’s about quality of life.
Good for you, Rich. I’ve been saying for awhile that people need to find ways to make technology work for them, instead of working for technology. While I use facebook and twitter, I spend most of my online time on my blog, instead of trying to merely keep up with other social media tools. I use my blog to go deep with my readers and use facebook and twitter to drive more people to my blog. Thanks for sharing. I’ve been doing online marketing for much less time than you, so I appreciate the insight.