Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about information overload, particularly from the perspective of one who receives a lot information daily (actually hourly).  I’m sure many people can relate, particularly those with an email account, at least one social media account and a phone.  Then, I began to think of information overload from the perspective of one who shares information via social media or other channels.   This post focuses on how information overload affects your ability to effectively use social media to inform and connect with your target audience.

Information Overload: A symptom of the high-tech age, which is too much for one human being to absorb in an expanding world of people and technology. It comes from all sources including TV, newspapers, magazines as well as wanted and unwanted regular e-mail and faxes. It has been exacerbated enormously because of the formidable number of results obtained from web search engines.

THE PROBLEM
Many people, myself included, are becoming frustrated with the volume of information pushed into their email inbox, voice mailbox, fax machine, twitter stream, facebook feed, cell phones, rss readers and the list goes on and on and on. People are searching for strategies for managing information and for tuning out any information that is unoriginal, overwhelming or of little value to them; this includes ignoring, unsubscribing, unfollowing, defriending and flat out deleting.

THE SOLUTION
Understanding information overload will help you in determining how to best connect with your target audience and how to ensure that your information is valuable and makes ‘the cut’ when they have “HAD ENOUGH!” and decide to reduce the noise. This can also improve your ability to effectively communicate with your target audience. You should understand:
1. the potential reaction your target audience may experience when you push information into their inboxes, twitter streams or other social media feeds.
2. the volume of information available on the same topic.
3. the value of the information to your target audience.

THE STRATEGY
Be sensitive to your audience by determining the following before ‘pushing’ information:
1. Is this important to my audience? (determining value)
2. Is this the best method for distributing this information to my audience? (selecting tools: Twitter, Blogs, Email etc.)
3. How does this information differ from other resources on the same topic? (ensuring originality)
4. Have I repeated this information before? When? Where? How many times? (reducing clutter)