Some futurists predict that one day, we may not feel so compelled to post, update, check in and share as much as we do today.

But right now, the irresistible drive to publish what we’re doing, thinking and experiencing—and the social media platforms to do it on—seem to be getting more prolific by the minute. You also may have noticed your audiences are getting pickier to boot. Now, you pretty much need something new, interesting and unique to say, show or share on each social media channel you adopt (much to the chagrin of those who use handy little apps to simply spew the same thing across all their digital profiles).

This is a good thing for better, more fitting content, but it’s also causing users to have an identity crisis of sorts. The conflict is no longer just about whether to friend an old flame on Facebook. Oh no. The dilemmas of these new offerings draw out and surface the multiple dimensions and personalities that can be found within ourselves, forcing us to decide whether the reflection that social media mirrors back is an accurate one. Consider just some of the soul-searching the average social media user now has to ponder:

-        Should I let my personal and professional life mingle on Facebook and just how awkward could it get?

-        How and what do I focus on in conversations I have with my Google+ circles? Should I share with everybody?

-        Will my obsessions with unicorns and knitting be best featured on Pinterest?

-        Is Tumblr going to be about my serious professional self or completely focused on my cat?

-        Do I want to share my fondness for fried foods on Instagram?

-        What will my coworkers think when they see I’m the mayor of Spartacus on Foursquare?

-        Will my friends listen to my Spotify playlist and believe I’m hopelessly behind the times?

-        If I tweet about these things, will I confuse my followers or run the risk that my boss will see it on LinkedIn?

Here are a few suggestions to help you organize and manage your somewhat split social media personalities:

Partition out of respect, not because you have something to hide

Ok, so you mainly tweet about your profession via Twitter. Given that, it makes sense that the photos of your cat you upload on Instagram may not interest your Twitter followers. Therefore, separating the two is probably a good idea. But the idea is to look at it from your audiences’ point of view and spare them things they may not find interesting, not to try to hide anything from certain people out of fear or embarrassment about what they might see. With that in mind, however . . .

. . . If you’re worried your mother, boss, spouse, etc., might see something, it’s probably best not to share it.

Common sense rules here. It really doesn’t matter how protected you think your circles are, or how well you’ve blocked select content from certain groups of friends, someone can still easily quote you or take something you’ve said and share it with others. With social getting more searchable, and open APIs, it’s pretty foolhardy to believe online activity will always be protected from view and won’t pop up in a search somewhere at some time. Which gets us to the next point . . .

. . . Don’t be so rigid about building those walls

This may seem contradictory to the first point, but keep in mind that the most interesting folks and brands on social don’t always stick to the party line—randomness of conversation, sharing something that may not be strictly in the wheelhouse of what you mainly focus on—is simply part of the culture. So if you want to share that particularly adorable picture of your cat in the bathtub via Twitter, even if it’s outside the things you typically talk about there, do it. Just don’t do it all the time (again, respect for your connections always reigns). That said . . .

. . . It’s ok to sit on the sidelines

Just because you’re using a channel, you don’t always have to swim with the fish. Sometimes, you can sit on the banks and enjoy the stream. For example, amazing photos are shared via Instagram every day. If you don’t feel like putting your photos out there for everyone to judge, it’s perfectly acceptable to join Instagram simply for the viewing pleasure of seeing what others are posting.  Finally, as with everything else in life . . .

. . . Decide what’s right for you

Social media is awesome for people who like to discover and explore. But not everyone is comfortable revealing so much online. That’s smart, and it makes sense to be protective and cautious. Figure out what works for you and don’t feel pressured to participate just because everyone’s doing it and it’s the hot new thing. This also goes to the point of sheer practicality. Unless it’s your job, let’s face it, managing all this stuff is incredibly time-consuming, as it takes lots of care and nurturing. Therefore, decide on your personal favorites and focus time and energy there if you’d like, vs. trying to do it all.

As you try out social media tools, what are some of the ways you use them to share different dimensions of yourself with others? What are your thoughts and suggestions for how to best manage it all?

Ben Samples: How User-Generated Content Is Changing SEO – Great article that further illustrates the multiplying intersections between search and social. As marketers, we need to be aware of this – and other overlaps – as we plan holistic strategies and programs.

Melissa Lion: Ever just mark all as read or say yes or no to something simply because the act of critical thinking is far too much trouble? This article in the New York Times magazine explores decision fatigue and how it affects the decisions we make or are made about us. It also has a look at that afternoon sugar craving we all feel. According the author, hoovering that dark chocolate bit of wonderful will help us make good decisions as we finish up our work days. Dark chocolate for all!

Darcie Meihoff: Love this list! Social media books that have nothing to do with social media. There’s some oldies but goodies here.

Anita Marks: The Big PR Lesson Companies Still Need to Learn about Facebook – In this article, Forbes explores how non-profit ForestEthics is using social media to forward its anti-tar sands oil agenda by pressuring corporate purchasers of the fuel, and how Nestle demonstrated a sub-optimal response to that pressure.

Gary Rubin: Turns out Facebook is not invincible on all fronts social media. The company is abandoning Places and seemingly yielding location-based social media interaction to companies like Foursquare.

Bill Fisher: I am totally intrigued by the new Glassboard mobile app, covered in a recent GigaOm post. It’s a cross-platform group communication tool that’s focused on simplicity and privacy, and some are calling it the anti-Facebook. Whatever you call it, it’s clearly targeting a very real and growing market of businesses that want to be social and build community, but want to keep audience members close and protected. I see this is a great option for private communities of brand advocates or “ambassadors,” who thrive on social communication but often need to share corporate information that’s not for public consumption.

Stefanie Week: Must. See. More. PINS! If you don’t know what that means then let me be the first to welcome you to the cult following that is Pinterest. Melanie Warner Spencer from the Houston Chronicle shares her addiction with Pinterest and gives a great overview of what this social network is all about.

Jesse Davis: I liked this article by Brian Solis about 14 Best Practices for Brands to Grow their Audiences in Social Media. You can’t go wrong by compiling best practices… right? Building a community is becoming increasingly difficult because people are subjected to so many “like this” or “follow me” requests that users are becoming more resilient to the chatter. The article has some good tips and tricks to grow a healthy audience and break through the noise.

What did you read this week?

Sarah Biedak: I am fascinated by the fact that people are shelling out big bucks for virtual goods. Revenue generated by virtual goods in social games (not including console- or mobile-based games) is set to hit $792 million in 2012, a 21.3 percent increase from 2011. Gamers are clamoring for branded items, and it’s interesting to see the ways in which companies are jumping into the marketplace with exclusive items.

Melissa Lion: Confession: I’ve been (secretly) thinking that all the Google+ proponents have missed the boat. Google+ isn’t the new face of social, it’s actually Turntable.fm. This article from Techdirt nails the reasons why Turntable is an awesome form of social communication and why, I think, it’ll be around far longer than Google+.

Julie Yamamoto: An interesting discussion about Facebook impressions from ClickZ.

Darcie Meihoff: I thought this article from the New York Times was an inspiring look at how social media and mobile devices are being used by MoMA in NYC to enhance a cultural experience. The writer also brings up an interesting point of view on why this might not be such a good thing as well. No matter what, as digital morphs into our everyday lives, it’s thought-provoking to see how it continues to shape how we experience things in very real ways.

Jesse Davis: It’s interesting to see Google+ adapt and grow. Even after countless heated blog posts, Google holds true to its “real name” policy.

Gary Rubin: Interesting read on how sports is developing into social media content, for consumption “anytime, anywhere.” Pac-12 Conference announcement on its new host of networks delivering games via TV, mobile and tablet. A good reminder about how audiences will view messaging going forward.

Stefanie Week: Every minute, 48 hours worth of video is uploaded to YouTube. Aside from the mundane content, there’s a new genre of entertainment forming on YouTube. This article from the Chicago Tribune, The fine art of YouTube, gives a great overview of some of the premiere content on YouTube.

A common scenario today is to use a contest to get more Facebook “Likes” while assuming these fans will become engaged customers. The problem is that many contests aren’t relevant to the brand, or to the consumer, and have a very low level of engagement.  In situations like these, most of the entrants either “Unlike” the brand after the contest or never engage again. But there are a few simple rules to ensure you’re not just attracting people who are only in search of an easy prize.

How to create a contest with value that lasts:

1)    Be relevant to the brand. The contest, the entry method, the purpose and the prize should all be relevant to the brand and the brand audience. Yes, offering an iPad will get you entrants, but unless your product or service is directly related to an iPad, it won’t have any lasting value.

2)    Create a contest that is engaging. Don’t create hurdles to entry, but design a process or entry mechanism that is fun and entertaining. Viewing videos that are brand relevant, answering a quiz, or otherwise engaging at a deeper level will help create a personal connection which leads to the audience being more receptive to future engagement marketing.

3)    Do something with the information collected. If you’re collecting email addresses for a newsletter, start sending the newsletter immediately and reference the contest. Make sure that the follow-up activity is complementary to the contest theme. If you wait too long to follow up, you’ve lost that connection.

4)    Likes don’t mean what you think they mean. Likes are incredibly powerful depending on how engaged the user is. If someone enters your contest purely for the prize, they probably have very little value as a marketing contact. For example, on Facebook, your posts will show up in their active content stream only 3 to 7% of the time. But if you can engage that person and get them to post to your wall, take a poll, or come back to your page a second time, etc., you are much more likely to show up in their stream and be able to re-engage them.

5)    Don’t violate terms of service or anti-spam laws. Before using a contest for list building, check the legal requirements for direct marketing to your audience. Similarly, if you’re using Facebook or another platform, check its policies for promotion marketing.

6)    Clearly articulate how the contest works. Uncertainty breeds fear, and fear is not something you want associated with your brand.

7)    Use the contestants to drive participation. With user-generated content, engage the contestants to get people to vote for their submissions. Make it easy for participants to share the contest information with their friends, but don’t make it a requirement of entry.

A good contest can drive engagement, interest and sales. A bad contest may be viewed by your audience as just one step away from spam.

Kevin Murphy has never won a contest that didn’t involve drinking or trivia, but he has managed a few over the years.

New page, new possibilities

A few ways Facebook’s changes have improved the brand and user experience:

• Custom tabs with iframes allow brands to streamline content and pass data directly to a hosting or analytics service. This is a big one, I’ll explain later.
• Admins can set and receive alerts based on fan activity and engagement.
• Brand page layouts are now similar to personal pages—five photos on the top and tabs on the left.
• Both fans and administrators have new filters for the wall that help prioritize wall content.
• Admins can now represent their page when interacting with other pages.

Which Facebook changes will have the biggest impact on marketers?

1. iframes, additional analytics and opportunities to serve up highly interactive content make custom tabs even hotter. With iframes, marketers can deliver more target—based on the user’s location and referral source—and more engaging content than ever before. Add Google Analytics to any tab for a deeper understanding of how users are interacting with its content.
2. The ability to comment or like other pages as your brand page leads to a larger potential audience. As part of your Facebook strategy, consider creating a program of interaction, where you post with your page identity to related pages and groups as a member of the community. By contributing positively, you’re likely to draw potential fans back to your page.

Bonus Facebook Tips!

• Not all likes are created equal. Just because someone likes you doesn’t mean they’ll consistently see your updates and posts. Facebook uses a complex algorithm to display posts on news feeds. Ongoing engagement with followers is critical to get value from your likes.
• Facebook ads are easy to manage, and with careful messaging and targeting can be very effective at drawing people to your page or your website.
• Post questions, activities and cool content. Try to put some type of link in your wall posts. The more interaction the fan has with your posts, the better.
• Facebook likes are now crawled by Bing. Your search results are likely to be influenced by what people are saying about you on Facebook. Here’s a peek at CMD on Bing:

How are some of your favorite brands using the new Facebook page design? What innovative ways are you using it? Tell us in comments.

Some of my fellow social media practitioners set up secret Facebook accounts just for their private lives, others segment their communities and then hide their updates from these groups. My approach when I started at CMD was to keep Facebook for my personal life, and Twitter for everything else. Well, that plan unraveled within the first week that I landed in the Earned Media team—a group of fellow social media lovers.

Though the option is certainly there to start new accounts just for my personal adventures, over the course of my year here, I’ve realized that it’s impossible to keep my personal social channels separate from my professional life. And not hiding my personal tweets or status updates forces me to create the same quality of content for myself that I do for my clients. In other words, I need to keep it clean.

Years ago, at my very first PR job, my boss said, “You are always representing your clients. 24 hours a day, you are representing your clients.”

Certainly, my social channels are not all RT’s of client news, or marketing insights from others, though there is some of that. I tweet and Facebook about my personal life frequently. Like my struggle to make a decent pie. But snark, irony and my rage general concern about Portland’s painfully slow cautious driving habits occur now in the privacy of my car or home instead of in my updates.

Occasionally I miss the snark. But mostly I accept it as a tradeoff for working in an industry that I love. Yes, I get to work with Facebook and Twitter and blogs all day long. And I am representing my clients on these social channels 24 hours a day. I’ve given up one for the other.

But I would like to add this disclaimer: absolutely none of my clients were involved with or took part in this pie. It was all my doing.

How do you manage your personal social media channels? Do you create secret accounts, or file professional contacts in a private folder? Or do you let it all hang out?

For the past few years, I’ve wondered what’s next, post-Twitter. Location-based sharing has yet to set me or anyone else on fire and if I had a nickel for every social networking site that I’ve had the mild enthusiasm to namestead on but never return to, I’d have a million nickels. Or maybe a few hundred nickels. Like ten nickels. I’d have fifty cents.

My point: there’s a new social networking site that I LOVE LOVE LOVE. LOVE! It’s Instagr.am.

On the surface it doesn’t look like much. Maybe a newfangled twitpic with filters. But if there’s anything that screams THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA, it’s this site. Here’s why: Instagram is the first site that lets you create something on the site and then share it with your friends. Is there another site that you can use to create in the cloud and then share in real time? Tell me if I’m missing one. Nicely.

With Instagram, you can share two ways—you can follow people like you do on Flickr, but unlike Flickr, you can also use Instagram like you do Twitter and watch the feed of your followers’ pictures flow past.

Instagram also lets you share your photos on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr, and Foursquare. Imagine a whole Tumblr blog with your Instagram pictures! How cool and fun! And also back away from the Internet because I’m going to do that! No. You can do that too. I guess.

Instagram is fairly limited. It’s only available for iPhone users, and you can only use their filters and it seems to me that you can only access your feed on your phone. But like Twitter has shown us, creativity thrives within boundaries.

I’m having a lot of fun with Instagram. I think if there are more social sharing sites that let you create with their tools and check out what your friends are creating in real time, plus allow you to share your creations with your communities on other social channels, I say bring it on.

These are some of my Instagram pictures. Are you checking out Instagram? If so, what do you think? And hey—add me! I’m melissalion.

On the other hand, the latest round of Facebook privacy concerns has led to a diaspora among tech-savvy folks. As a social media lover and an admirer and follower of many early adopters, I’m paying attention to where they’re going. What I’ve seen so far—they’re taking it to Twitter and to their own blogs. What? No new social network someone has uncovered from Canada?

So what’s next? I mentioned a diaspora, right? Well, some tech-savvy college students have gotten together and started Diaspora. It’s an open-source social network that has yet to be built, but is already funded to the tune of $173,000 through Kickstarter. (Their goal was $10,000.) I have my five bucks on this—the tech-savvy people love open-source and hey, it’s college students! Just like Facebook!

Until those guys get their Facebook-crusher built and I hear a liftoff from my Twitter feed, I’m waiting for someone to take me up on my offer to bring back Friendster. C’mon. You know you miss getting email in your Hotmail about the birthday of that college friend whose name you can’t remember five years later. Who’s with me? … Hello?

As director of the PRSA Portland Metro Chapter’s New Professionals Group this year, I’ve talked with a variety of young public relations and marketing pros about scoring that first job, and recognized that there are a few things that college doesn’t necessarily teach you, but they’re important to acknowledge. Think networking, keeping up with the news, getting your references in order and dressing professionally. Here are three thoughts that I’d like to share from some of the New Pros:

1. Schedule informational meetings before the school year ends. Hiring managers get a flood of interview requests from graduates in the spring.

2. Ask for feedback. Schedule time with several professors, or your school’s career center, and show them your resume and portfolio, and conduct mock interviews. No one else is going to tell you you’re saying, “Um, and um, and like…” if you don’t ask.

3. Manage your online reputation. Most everyone is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter these days. Not only should you demonstrate your knowledge of these apps, but it’s time to clean up anything you wouldn’t want published on the front page of The New York Times. Remember, if it’s on the Internet, an employer will find it.

What’s the best piece of advice you received about finding a job? Hiring managers, what do you like to see from recent graduates? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

While this marketing tactic can be a strategic, cost-effective and engaging way for brands to connect with key audiences, with so much noise and so many opportunities to win, it can be challenging to make a major impact. So how do brands break through the clutter and get noticed?

Based on our experience planning and implementing a variety of social media contests for clients, here are a few helpful tips to get you on the right path to success:

1. Decide between sweepstakes and competitions. There are pros and cons to both wide-reaching sweepstakes and narrower, skills-based competitions. When you’re deciding between the two, take a look at your goals and determine which format will best reach your objectives. Random-drawing sweepstakes, like giving away gift cards or trips, will likely result in more entry submissions, but you’ll have a more challenging time ensuring you’re reaching your target audience. Competitions that require a skills-based entry, like a video or essay, will usually result in fewer submissions but they are likely to come from your target audience because they have invested their time to participate.

2. Generate word-of-mouth. Utilizing social media tools to help your audience easily engage with you and their friends is a must. But more importantly, develop a contest theme that your audience wants to share. Think about it from the perspective of a user: Do I want to associate myself with what the contest is promoting? Including a vote, or people’s choice element, is a good way to encourage sharing and active participation from the audience.

3. Provide milestones. Create momentum and enthusiasm by implementing public stages for the contest, such as nomination periods, finalist selection and winner announcements. Not only does this cycle get people talking and taking action, it also gives you multiple touch points with your key audiences.

4. Form partnerships. When appropriate, it helps to have the support of recognizable associations because it lends a sense of credibility to your promotion. Depending on the contest structure, consider partnering with trade organizations, nonprofit associations, community groups or activists. Partnerships are also key in helping you connect with new audiences.

5. Link to a cause. In social media, we know it’s not all about you. To be authentic and genuine, make a connection between your promotion and a supportive cause. Cause-related efforts can be key in generating word-of-mouth. People like to be good scouts and they’re more than happy to share and spread the word about an effort to help their local school, nonprofit or other worthy causes.

For more tips, check out the SlideShare presentation below that we presented to our local PRSA chapter last year.