Technology is ever-changing in our world and the Internet moves swiftly. For those who engage others through social media, everything charges forward at a mercurial pace. Take Twitter, for example: even following less than 100 other Twitter accounts, you are likely to see your main Twitter feed refresh with new tweets every 5-10 seconds. Now imagine you are following 1,000 Twitter accounts or more! When you factor in Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, and many other social media sites out there, it may be hard to imagine how social media can work for you and simplify your life. With everything shifting and changing at lightning speeds, the assumption is that social media drains our energy, wastes our time, and takes our focus away from more important projects. If you know how to use social media sites properly, this is not the case at all, and in fact, you can save time by using social media!
We lead busy lives and there are so many people we try to stay in touch with as much as possible. But there are only so many hours in the day for making phone calls or even texting. This is where social media sites prove to be invaluable. You can connect with friends and family on sites like Facebook and Twitter, log in for even just thirty minutes per day and check in on the people you are closest to, leave little messages for them, “like” their posts to show your interest in their lives, and you eliminate the stress of losing touch with those you love. If you are someone who experiences social anxiety and yet does not want to completely forego contact with others, there are so many ways social media can help with this as well. Blogging sites or places such as Tumblr and Twitter make it easy for you to find those with similar interests. From there, you can reply, retweet, send direct messages and connect beyond merely a superficial level. This can help people who experience any anxiety in social situations because it allows them to form connections and friendships without needing to push past their comfort level.
For business professionals, freelancers, artists and anyone else wanting to broaden their network of professional contacts, there are various social media tools which enable this. There are forums on LinkedIn, relevant hashtags to follow on Twitter. For filmmakers, they can connect through social media sites such as Stage 32 or hitRecord. This drastically improves career prospects and helps those who are hoping to follow their dreams and perhaps break into creative fields such as writing, filmmaking and music. Social media sites connect people from all over the world without ever needing to cold call or bang on doors. This saves time and resources for many people. As well, sites like HootSuite make it easy to automate social media posts so even if you are busy with one task, you appear to be posting regularly on social media. The more you post, the more visible you are, thus making you more likely to be seen as someone to laud and follow.
If you are new to social media and worried about the benefits outweighing the risks, you will quickly see that spending even just thirty minutes per day on social media sites will mitigate the stress in your life and make things so much more streamlined and uncomplicated.
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