Are you to the point now where if you get one more email inviting you to one more social network (SN) you are going to scream? I mean enough is enough already! Am I right?

I’m not saying that social networks are not a good idea. I’ve met some wonderful, creative, and talented people through just about every SN I’ve joined. I’ve also managed to get some decent connections and promotion out them as well. But who has time for all of this socializing and networking? When does it start to be a waste of time rather than a way to promote your crafting while you get to know others in your chosen craft field?

If you go to my About Me page, you’ll see links to various SNs I’ve joined, about 8 so far, and holding. Honestly, while I know there are some other great ones out there, I’ve decided to stick with these for now. Even then, I still know I’m not using them to their full potential, but I have managed to find a balance that has worked for me, so I thought I’d pass it along.

Ideally, I would be posting blog entries every day on these SNs, but Twitter is really the only one I can manage because it’s so quick. Plus, I have my blog entries from my About.com site and this site set up to automatically post over there, and then Twitter automatically updates my Facebook page. So, that requires zero time on my part now that I have that set up.

The other SN sites, though, are a different story. For those, I try to go over once a week or every other week, when I have the time, and post a duplicate blog entry that lists lots of links to projects, articles, and whatever else I’ve been doing around the web. As an example, you can see my latest blog post over at MyCraftivity and then pop over to my MySpace page and see the same post, same goes for MetalChasers.

Most blogs in these SNs have an HTML option. Thus I can write up one blog post, view the HTML, block and copy it, and then paste it into the HTML window of another blog. This saves me a lot of time, and I can spread the word about my various other writing and craft work to a variety of readers since not all my myspace readers will necessarily be on metalchasers and metalchasers might not be on mycraftivity.

As I said, if I had the time, I know a daily posting like this to all the blogs would be a better way to go, but for now, this system is what I’ve come up with as a way to still use the advantages of SNs without driving myself completely insane with it all.

If you know of other simple ways to manage SNs, bring them on! I’m sure there are other simple methods I’m probably not considering.