I’ve recently learned about a new social media network that allows you to share your credit card purchases with your family, friends or strangers. My initial reaction was … Um, Why?

The service is called Blippy. It’s currently in beta, but it has already been labeled “The Twitter for Credit Card Purchases”. To use the service, you connect one of your credit cards with your Blippy account. Then, each time you make a purchase using that card, your friends and/or network of strangers will see what you purchased and where you made the purchase. Sounds fancy. And stupid. And noisy. And potentially dangerous.

I’m sure some social media ‘guru’ will identify a higher purpose for this service, but I can’t. And I tried. Even if I assumed that most people wouldn’t share their purchasing history with perfect strangers, I still can’t find the value in passively (automatically) sharing your purchases in real-time detail, to anyone. If I called my Mom and told her about every purchase I made, she would block my number. And I would do the same. If the purchase is notable, I tend to phone, text or email the people that would be interested (a very short list of people). Imagine all of your friends, coworkers, clients and a few random strangers walking up to you on the street and saying “I just purchased a $3.96 latte at Starbucks.” At some point you’ll respond “So what!” or “You’re at Starbucks again?”.

Imagine a world where everyone is sharing every single detail of their day, simply because innovations in technology allow them to do so (i.e. for kicks and giggles)? The more noise created, the harder it is for you, as an entrepreneur, to get your message through the tsunami of irrelevant data and noise. Now more than ever, it is important for entrepreneurs and business owners to provide authentic engagement and value to your target audience. Before you share any information on a social network, particularly for business purposes, ask yourself:

1. Is this something I think my audience will want to know?
2. Is distributing this information important to meeting my business goal(s) or mission?

If the answer is no to both questions, think twice about sharing.

Source: Introducing a Twitter for Credit Card Purchases (New York Times)

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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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)

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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