A Social Sanity Manifesto for 2012

The more time we spend using social media, the more our online conversations seem to be dominated by reflections on how social media is frustrating, aggravating and overtaxing. Our stress is compounded by each new performance metric that we're told to track and optimize, but social networking companies keep adding more, because they know each new target motivates us to do the job of growing their networks for them.
And yet much of our pain is self-inflicted, the product of online and professional pressures that are at least as much perceived as real. At the dawn of 2007, you didn't care about your Klout score, your Twitter following, your FourSquare Mayorships or your YouTube views, because those networks were tiny or not-yet-born. Five years later, you may be heading into 2012 with cellular-level awareness of how many people retweeted you today, or how many +1s you got for your latest blog post.
Perception quickly becomes reality. If you already care more about your social media metrics than you'd like to admit, then tomorrow, caring about those numbers may be essential to your personal and professional success. The more we each pay attention to still-questionable metrics like Klout or Twitter mentions, and the more we choose to structure our work and lives to optimize them, the more they matter. We are creating a world in which we live our online lives as a scorecard.
That is not a world I want to live in ten years from now, or even in 2012. Given that this is the season of resolutions, it's a perfect time to rebel against social benchmarking. We can, individually and collectively, steer our online lives according to an internal compass instead. And we can create that world by committing to very specific practices that will keep us individually and collectively sane online.
I present the Social Sanity Manifesto: 10 commitments that you can make to escape the measurement trap, and bring some humanity to the numbers people you interact with online.

• I will delete my Klout profile. (If you use social media, you probably have one, even if you haven't signed up on Klout; find out how to delete it here. ) I will assess my influence through my actual and reflected accomplishments, not enumerated, commodified relationships.
• I will only accept LinkedIn connection requests from people I am actively interested in helping. If I don't know them well enough to do them a favour, I don't know them well enough to ask for a favor, even if that favor is simply an introduction.
• I will not judge others based on their online metrics. I'll reply to emails and mentions based on my interest and availability, not the Klout score or follower count of the person who is writing to me.
• I will not game my online metrics. I will not follow accounts just to get a follow back, or stage contests to attract more Facebook likes; I'll simply take what emerges organically.
• I will not click on any score-based meme. I don't need to add any more numbers to my internal (or external) dashboard.
• I will check in with intent: whether the intent to let my friends know where I am, to motivate myself to keep going to the gym, or to keep a travelogue. I don't need badges or mayoral standing to make an outing worthwhile.
• I will ignore my ratings. The number of "likes" I get for a Facebook post isn't what matters. What matters are the names of the people who enjoyed that post, and what they have to say about it.
• I will check my site analytics no more than once a week. If I check my analytics more than once a month, it will be to answer a question, not to seek validation.
• I won't compare myself to others. I will not look at the follower count or Amazon ranking of a friend, colleague or competitor, simply to see who is more successful or more loved. I will not use analytics tools that compare me to other individuals.
• I will set my own benchmarks. I will clarify and document my online goals (become a better photographer, build a network of supportive colleagues in my industry, learn new ways to get my work done) and track the quantitative and qualitative indicators that help me assess the progress I'm making on what really matters to me.

Am I suggesting that we should live in a world without metrics or benchmarks? Of course not. Data is one of the most powerful tools the web has to give us, and social media can make effective use of data just like any other business practice. But there is a world of difference between using data as a tool for shaping your organization's presence, and using data as a way to evaluate yourself or others as professionals or individuals. Precisely because social media is social, i.e., pertaining to the relationship between and among human beings, we have to be exquisitely sensitive to the way that an obsession with social media metrics can commodify or dehumanize individuals and relationships.
The Social Sanity Manifesto offers a way to avoid that kind of dehumanization, and you can commit to it beginning on January 1. Make this commitment personally, and you'll relieve yourself of the performance anxiety that can quickly come to dominate your online experience. Make this commitment as an organization, and you can develop a social media presence that will drive deep engagement, connection and thinking within and to your organization. Make this commitment as a society, and we can pull ourselves out of this tailspin into an online culture obsessed that's measured rather than experienced.