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I’m curious, as you know, in the interplay between human psychology and social media, so I wanted to share some research with you about social networks and loneliness.
Sparked from this article, this post will deal with being highly socially networked, but still experiencing loneliness.
The research cited is interesting, because it finds that there is a whole group of behaviors (including happiness, smoking, and obesity) which are seen as “contagious” within your social network. This means that the behaviors and attitudes of those in your social network have direct impact on your choices in these areas.
It’s a powerful statement of how influenced we are by those we are closest to.
Loneliness is defined as a perception of social isolation, regardless of how many relationships a person really has. People who have high quality relationships, even if they are few in number, tend to experience less loneliness. John Cacioppo, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, has studied how loneliness is transmitted within social networks.
His findings suggest that if a direct connection of yours is lonely, you are 52% more likely to be lonely. If the connection is a friend of a friend, 25% more lonely. If the connection is 3 degrees out (a friend of a friend of a friend), it’s 15%.
While this research looked at offline social networks, it may have some implications for online social networking as well.
If someone in your online social network is angry, lonely, or hostile, and takes it out on you, you are more likely to ‘transmit’ this mood yourself. This means that, even though you may never have met this person, or interacted with them in real life, their “bad behavior” can still influence yours.
As we become increasingly networked and involved with each other, it’s going to be more and more crucial to monitor our own influences and reactions. We are already prone to increased social decision-making with the growth of social media- we might also be more prone to social media moodiness, depending on who we are spending time with and paying attention to within our social networks.
While social media seduction is enticing, it’s important to remember that we need to cultivate real life friendships too. We need to be aware of separating our thoughts and emotions from those we are in contact with, and making sure that our reactions or feelings are truly our own before we engage in behaviors we might regret.
If you find yourself feeling frazzled, hassled, overwhelmed or stressed out by too much social networking, it might be time to turn the computer off.
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When you are building your brand and your business online, one of the most important elements to monitor is your online reputation. If you know anything about online reputation management, you know, essentially, that it’s the process of monitoring and managing what people are saying about you and your company.
Online, as in real life, word of mouth is one of the most potent methods for spreading good news (and bad).
While there are many paid services to help you monitor your online reputation, there are several free tools you can (and should be!) using to keep track of your mentions on the web.
The first is using Google alerts. You can set these up at http://www.google.com/alerts. You would set these up for your name, your business name, and any key terms or initiatives you might also be monitoring. Using this free service enables you to be notified whenever there is a new Google listing for any of your keyword terms. You can set how often you should be notified (I have mine set to daily), and you can set up as many alerts as you would like. It’s wise to use your desired keyword term in quotes (as in “red cars” rather than red cars), as this increases the specificity of your alerts. Google alerts are a good first line listening tool to monitor your online reputation.
A second tool you can use to monitor your online reputation is a site such as Keotag, which is located at http://www.keotag.com. When you visit this site, you’ll be able to enter a keyword to research. You could start with your name, for instance. When you submit your query, you’ll be given a list of sites you’d like to search. When you select a site, you’ll be given a set of listings where your keyword terms appear. Sometimes Keotag returns results that the other tools miss, so I like to have it in my arsenal.
A third tool you can use to monitor your online reputation is Addictomatic, which is located at http://www.addictomatic.com. This site is great because it pulls from many content sources, and you can get a one page listing of your keyword as it appears on various sites. You can remove or switch around the order of results. What I like to do with this site is set up some custom keyword searches and then bookmark them in my browser. This way, I can easily return, at a glance, whenever I’d like to be updated on new information on my keyword.
I’ll be covering other tools in future blog posts, but these three will get you started. If you don’t have these set up and running for your name, business, and main business terms, set these up right away.
It’s always good to know what people are talking about- especially if it’s you!
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