In case you missed the news, social media is officially mainstream! OK, so the announcement may not have you jumping up and down or ringing up everyone you know – not even grandma – because it hardly constitutes news. In fact, research shows that 60% of web users access social networks at work. Social networking is arguably ubiquitous, as it transcends generational and social lines on a growing basis. In fact, Ning.com – one site dedicated to helping users create their own social networks is itself increasing exponentially and predicts to have over 4 million social networks by 2010. On almost a daily basis, another major corporation announces jumping on the bandwagon to create their own social network.

The Appeal and the Problem
In the era of personal branding, one of the most widely-acclaimed and accessible tools you can have in your toolbox is apresence is social media. The logic behind this is simple: social media has the ability to connect you to some of the most influential, popular, and interesting people in the world. The problem behind how many people apply this logic is also simple: simply having the word “friend” or “follow” between you and someone else doesn’t mean a real connection exists.

You know how the story goes. A friend sends you a link to a new network or tool, you join up – just in case it becomes popular so you can tell everyone you discovered it first. Or, someone really cool online starts a new social network, so you join too, hoping to bump digital elbows. But before you realize it – or even if you are so “connected” you never have time to really notice – your presence in the majority of these social networks is the metaphorical equivalent of taking a cardboard cut out of yourself to a cocktail party.

And since, let’s just face it, the number of social networks is not likely to slow its course expanding toward infinity, the strategy of winner-joins-all is no longer a relevant way to participate in social media. So, now’s a great time to stop haphazardly joining every social networking site you can put your digital fingers around and evaluate your social media presence before it totally overwhelms your online persona. Here are five tips for conducting a personal social networking check up:

1 – Quantify Your Current “Involvement”

Start of by creating a situational analysis summary for yourself. Look at the following:

  • Sites you have a user name for. Include everything from your senior class’s social network on Ning to your Digg profile. From the frivolous to the basic. Any and everything social. List them out. Even if you’ve forgotten the password. If you can’t remember them all, do a Google search of your name or preferred user name(s), and you’ll probably uncover a few you’d forgotten about.
  • Now, see if you can remember (or find out on profile activity) the last time you were active on that network. Active means more than just lurking. The last comment you posted, the last photo you shared, the last article you tagged. How long has it been? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Years?
  • Figure our your profile to activity ratio. The number of profiles you have compared to the number of sites you’re active on
  • Now, let’s take a look at that ratio. Make a list, and evaluate it. Chances are, the side with profiles is a lot bigger than the side with activity. Good to know. Now, let’s move on to the next step

2 – Evaluate Your Passion and Interest

It’s easy enough to understand that belonging to more sites than you can manage to stay active on is not really a benefit to you or your digital personal brand. It’s harder to say goodbye to the places you may have invested a lot of time in. But before you rush out and delete every profile you’ve created, evaluate them first. There may be some you need to ditch. But by doing so, you might just create enough excess time to invest more in those you should. So, take a minute and think about the following in regards to your list:

  • Which ones am I passionate about? Where are the topics that interest me? The people? The opportunities?
  • Which sites have the greatest potential for you.
  • Where am I adding value?
  • Where do I wish I could spend more time?

3 – Analyze Your Goals

Whether or not you’ve ever sat down and written formal, SMART goals for your social networking profiles, chances are, you had at least an inkling of an idea what you expected out of them. So take a few minutes an think about our overall goals:

  • Why are you involved in social media to begin with? Maybe it’s a goal to build your business, perhaps you want to educate yourself about social media, maybe it’s a personal goal to meet people with common interests, or perhaps you’re interested in professional development. It doesn’t matter what your overall goal is. In fact, it doesn’t matter how many goals you have! Just enumerate them, because that will make the process of prioritizing easier.
  • What are your personal branding and networking goals?   Online, offline, at work, everywhere.
  • What are your goals for each social network?Entertainment? Relationship-building? Knowledge? Networking? How do these relate to your other goals. Which social networks will help you advance the first two sets of goals?

4 – Assign Value for Relationships

Now comes the Personal PR factor of your self analysis. This is the part you consider the relationship-factors for your social networks, undeniably the most critical component – the words social and network are both inherently relationship-based, after all.

  • Where are my most important and valuable relationships?
  • Do these relationships move across social networks?
  • What sites offer the most relational potential – via conversation, sharing, debate, etc.
  • Where are my aspirational contacts active?
  • Where are my readers and fans active?

As Seth Godin points out, fake networking is worth nothing, and no one cares about you. Deal with it. The word “friend” in social media hasn’t meant much since the MySpace glory days. What is important is relationships. Real, authentic, I-could-crash-on-your-couch relationships. This really is the heart of the matter when it comes to evaluating your social networking situation. Think about the value of your relationships. Which social networks help you build new relationships? Which ones help you strenthen or deepen others?

5 – Decide: Am I Deep or Wide?

Now that you’ve taken time to analyze your involvement in social media, it’s time to look at the overall narrative your involvement paints. The best way to describe your overall situation is to answer the following question:

Is my presence in social media across all the sites I’m a part of deep, or is it wide?

The Wide Mentality thinks like this: I will be everywhere and have a more robust personal brand because wherever one can go online, I will be there. I will friend thousands of people and therefore increase my perceived social capital on sites like Twitter but only relate with very few users I already know and care about.

The Wide Reality is simply this: You are spread too thin you can’t adequately manage your digital brand across all sites. The amount of time you have to dedicate to building and developing relationshiips is diluted to the point that you’re not building relationships with anyone.

The Deep Mentality thinks like this: I will spend my time online wisely by limiting the number of places I’m active and even, perhaps, the number of relationships I seek. I realize that social networking is not a numbers game, and the real power of the social web comes through relationships, no matter how few I begin seeking to build. Relationships are not collected, they are build.

The Deep Reality demonstrates the transformational power of authentic relationships to change a person’s life. Developing deep bonds through social networking takes time, consideration, conversation, thought, and sharing – of information, ideas, and your identity but through persistence and dedication, it is possible in ways never before possible. There’s another reality that the rockstars of the web will share: Deep also has the ability to widen your reach.

The Next Steps

What you do with this information now is up to you. You may realize you have over-extended your personal brand and that it’s time for a social networking overhaul. Or, you may choose to invest more time in some social networks and less time in others. You may take this information and think about it, as I have been doing for a while, as you ponder your next moves.

If you’d like to chat about it, meet me in the comments section. If you’re wondering what I’m up to, feel free to subscribe to my daily updates on Twitter, or sign up to recieve Personal PR for free via RSS or e-mail.