Being Cheryl: Social Media Marketing Strategist from Columbus, Ohio.

It’s hard to find time to keep up with even two or three social networking websites, and with a bajillion or so social networks out there (this incomplete wikipedia list may make you dizzy), it can be downright overwhelming. Personally I’m on at least 17 social networking sites that I can think of off the top of my head, countless others I’ve forgot I signed up for, and with the exception of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, I almost NEVER check them.

The problem with this is two-fold: one, someone could be trying to reach me through these sites. Many of them probably have e-mail notification options in such events, but I don’t want more crap cluttering my time OR Inbox, so I don’t get em. Thus, for all I know, I could have a 150k job offer waiting for me on Naymz or something. Crap.

The second problem lies in something I recently encountered - reputation management, personal image, perception control, or whatever jargon you want to use to describe how people view you. A few weeks after Google Profiles launched, I went to edit the content in mine for the first time. And someone had already filled it out for me! And THIS is what my bio section said:

“During the week I like c*$k in my mouth but during the weekends, the a$% is where its at.” (not censored on my Google profile, FYI.)

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I did NOT write that. I still have no idea who did. As a recent college graduate I can speculate I left my Google account logged in at a friend’s house or at school and someone edited this to be funny. I was not amused. I spent the next 3 hours Googling myself (Google masturbation as a friend once described it) and checking all my social profiles for other inappropriate content.

But back to the initial point of this post and he moral of this story: you HAVE to keep up with these sites, keep them up to date and keep in contact.

The simple solution? Create a schedule to monitor and maintain the social networking sites that you don’t use everyday and spend 15 minutes once a week on each site. Put it in your Outlook, Google Calendar, cell phone calendar, pen-and-paper planner… whatever you use to keep yourself organized. On Mondays, check Ryze and Plaxo. Tuesdays, SpeakerSite and MySpace. Etc, etc.

Wherever you are online, or wherever you can spare 15 minutes to be, assign to a day of the week. The more (to a point) social profiles you have, the better, because you can control (to a point) your presence online. After all, you’re screwed if a quick Google search reveals something bad about you, but you’re probably even more screwed if Google says nothing about you.