I make a living off of social networking.  My entire job and the creation of my company is to ensure that people can connect online with other people.  Sure, I work primarily in the music industry, but the concept has spread like wildfire.  A few years ago it wasn’t happening and now it is more than ever.  So what’s the problem?  Isn’t this what you wanted?

Here’s my current struggle.

With Social Networking blowing up the way it has, the platform for the ‘expert’ has literally spread to even the most shaded parts of the internet.  I can’t even look at my computer without being given some five-point plan on how to become as awesome as the person writing it.  Five points to being a better husband, five points to being a better boss, five points to being a better social networker, five points to writing better five point lists.  Everyone is an expert.  And it instantly makes no one an expert.  Just another noisemaker.

And here’s the thing.  It’s really not that I want to be considered an ‘expert’ with the rest of them, because I’m not.  I’m really bad at putting bullet point lists together and I don’t really care if anyone thinks what I am doing is the best way or not.  Here’s the part that jacks me up.  Because of all the noise and the details of my job, it’s become increasingly important that I pay attention to all these social networking strategies.  To survive I need to be ahead of the ‘experts’.  I need to dig deeper, know more, execute faster and succeed loudest.  Frick.  No pressure huh?

When I started this thing, very few were on the social networking train.  Twitter was still in diapers and blogging was for action figure collectors.  So there weren’t the ‘experts’ forcing their ways into my phone, email and web pages telling me what I needed to keep up with.  And I could handle it.  I could focus on things that needed to be executed and made sure they were done well.  With the increase of ‘experts’ out there, I’ve noticed a huge stress in my life to “keep up” which I think only hurts the end product.  Not so expert.

I recently downloaded Twittelator Pro for one very specific reason.  The mute feature.  I like following people and checking in on people, but I realized I simply can’t handle all the ‘expert’ noise out there.  I can’t do it.  I can’t keep up with everything that everyone thinks I should be doing.  What I can do is keep my head down and work as hard as I can to do the very best I possibly can for the artists that we work with.

So for now, I’m working on that.  I’m working on getting these ‘experts’ out of my head and off my phone, and I’m working on doing the best I can for the people I need to.  And I don’t need to prove to you I’m an expert to do that.

So let’s hear it, anyone else notice an huge increase in your life’s expectation since the ‘social networking boom’?