Seems like everyone is all hyped about social media, yet for some reason I have a really hard time understanding it. I Also have a hard time understanding global warming… I know that we are polluting the air, but I just don’t believe the impact on the environment. Same with social media. I can understand the human approach, I can understand social networks, I can even understand crowdsourcing… The problem is, I love to program and that makes me logical.

I’m a programmer at heart. I know to be successful in today’s world you need ot reach out and help others, but there is an underlying problem. I program and therefore I automate things. Writing code for me is to make things run better and with less interaction. My favorite applications completely automate the entire process of human input and data syndication. Meaning I love to grab (mash) data from all over the web and then spread that data to other places for fun and profit.

I can see that this problem doesn’t just effect me. Most programmers that want to make money on the internet know they should blog, even though from what I see, blogging is probably the slowest way to achieve an income online. Programmers know they have to blog, so they download Wordpress and start to blog, but spend way more time coding the site. Making plugins, coding themes, etc…

Another problem with programmers is that they know anything can me done on the internet. With all the tools out there, I can do anything you want and so I never say NO. This gets me in a lot of trouble because of course I can’t deliver when the projects stack up. So what starts out as an awesome social media play, has turned into a huge letdown and no benefit for all parties involved.

It’s hard to quit the habit. It’s hard to not program all day and try to make connections. You (the programmer) has to look at your daily routines and see if you really are making connections, building relationships and growing your authority.

I have huge plans for some really cool websites, but realize that just throwing the content out there is not working. Making a new community or website that helps the community is useless if the community doesn’t know about it. We (the programmers) are valuable resources, when we have relationships with people that can put it all together on a human level

My Social Media Discoveries… Obvious to everyone but programmers.

1. Programmers get mad because we all know that the internet was social way before Facebook or Twitter. The internet was made to join people together, so in essence, the programmer is the smartest person on earth. So most of us have a chip on our shoulder because we already knew the internet was about social media. Problem is, nobody every asked us about it! Now it’s time to shine and show what we can do.
2. Find you top social networks and make connections instead of changing the color of your Wordpress theme. Start slow, spend 50% of your time commenting and conversing with other people. I’m looking for a netbook right now so I can just sit and watch TV while tweeting. Am I being productive… Absolutely not. I should be coding and getting things done.
3. Don’t automate everything just because you can. I’ve done it, I got millions of Twitter followers across many accounts. Connected fully automated blogs to them so they “tweeted” every hour… It was a fun weekend project and I learn a lot about Twitter which I use in other applications, but as far as extending my social capital… not so much.
4. Stop multitasking – designate time to blog, to answer emails, to code, etc… Don’t try to do them all at once. I think my 10 month old baby boy has taught me this… because when he is awake, there is no work being done… it’s 100% baby time.
5. Don’t hate Twitter because it sucks and you know there are better applications out there. I fall into this trap all the time. 140 characters seem really dumb to me, but if Ashton and Britney likes it, so be it, don’t fight it. But, really my time will come, and with RSSCloud or PubSubHubBub on the horizon, I’m really excited to see a new evolution in “real” real time. None of this 140 character, with short urls so you have no idea what link you are clicking crap.

Are you a programmer? tell me what you think