Too Many Touchpoints
Last week Jamey Stegmaier put out a pretty vulnerable article about dealing with social media, and how for him, Twitter is an unhealthy environment. So, he is stepping away from the platform.
It is a worthwhile read, and it is always admirable when we try to better ourselves.
Jamey’s thoughts tie into something that’s been on my mind for awhile now.
Too Many Touchpoints
Running a business, it’s important that we engage with people through their preferred platforms – or at least that we are discoverable on those platforms. For us, that means that we maintain accounts on:
Facebook
Discord
Twitter
Instagram
Reddit
Board Game Geek
TikTok
YouTube
Twitch
Plus, I monitor e-mail, respond to web-form submissions, blog comments, and on many platforms I’m managing not just the corporate Pine Island Page, but game specific pages as well.
This comes on top of managing messages and comments on the Nut Hunt Kickstarter page, Backerkit inquiries, and all of the normal tasks that come with running a business.
In short, there are a lot of things to keep track of.
I really enjoy interacting with the community and our insiders through this blog and social media. It’s one of my favorite parts of the job - but, I don’t have the bandwidth to really engage on every platform.
So, I need to prioritize.
Places I make a concerted effort to engage and be a member of the community:
This blog
TikTok
Discords: Sigil, TikTok Board Gaming
Facebook forums: Board Game Design Lab, Crowdfunding Nerds
Reddit forums: r/boardgames, r/boardgamedesign, r/tabletopgamedesign
Places that I wish we engaged more, but that is mostly my created content without a lot of organic user-generated content:
Channels that we maintain primarily for discoverability, but aren’t particularly active on:
Board Game Geek
Twitch (I plan on being more active on this once Sigil Online automatic matchmaking is up and running)
Instagram
YouTube
Places that we don’t really engage with, or have a minimal presence:
Twitter
Everywhere else
A Bigger Problem
A major part of successfully navigating adult life is staying on top of and completing a plethora of maintenance tasks.
And, failing to complete these tasks can have very real and damaging consequences:
Household chores
Bookkeeping
Filing taxes
Renewing insurance
Signing your kid up for sports
Having the executive function to be organized and methodical in tackling maintenance tasks goes a long way.
Some high level executive functioning
And, there is an unlimited amount of tasks we can take on that would have a tangible benefit (assuming we have the time and capacity to complete them).
Take something like credit card rewards. I know that I could save money on purchases if I was more conscious of signing up for card rewards, and then shopping where I have discounts. And occasionally I will click through and activate a bunch of rewards.
But often, tasks like that just don’t make the cut.
As I’ve gotten older the amount of, and complexity of these maintenance tasks has ballooned. I’d imagine that part of this is the normal arch of adult life, and of starting a business, and I am sure it will only get worse (I don’t after all own a home or have kids yet).
How We Communicate
I don’t know that the maintenance problem is worse in modern society than it has been historically, but it feels like some aspects of our modern life exacerbate the problem.
These are all ways that people get in touch with me:
Phone
Text message
Whatsapp
E-mail (both my personal and the business account)
Mail (to our apartment or PO box)
Slack
Form submissions and blog comments
Kickstarter messages or comments
Facebook messenger (both my personal account, and the Pine Island account)
Direct messaging on: LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Discord, Reddit
Responding to my posts / comments, or tagging us on any social media
Some of these communications I’m able to consolidate to my email, but not all. It’s impossible to consolidate a lot of social media or in platform communication. And it’s really hard to keep track of things like conversations on Facebook messenger.
It seems like every platform has its own messaging. This is from a graphic design service.
Managing communication and keeping track of conversations is a task in and of itself. And, I often have to ask people to communicate through alternate means – for instance I move business conversations that need a follow up off of direct messages and onto email, and when people email me game submissions, I ask them to use our form submission (as it’s the only way we can keep track of everything).
It Isn’t All Worth It
Social media shines when it serves as a way to connect us and bring people together. But, often it is divisive, and can bring out the worst in people.
There is a distance that is created when we interact online, which can be exacerbated by anonymity. Sometimes people are just jerks, and even when they are not, it can be hard to read nuance and tone in comments.
And, sometimes how we take something is a reflection of our personal emotional state in the moment.
It’s laudable that Jamey recognized that Twitter brings out the worst in him, and that he is taking steps to improve himself and how he interacts with others online.
Being a good person aside, at the end of the day, for Jamey, Twitter wasn’t achieving what the main goal of his social media exists to achieve. It wasn’t connecting productively him with the community.
Rather, it was doing the opposite.
We all have to choose what platforms we prioritize. And it makes sense to de-prioritize a platform that for whatever reason isn’t working.
Emotional and Mental Bandwidth
I grew up in a bed and breakfast. It was a little 7 room inn in Concord Mass run by my parents, and with pretty modest hired help.
It was a 24/7 kind of job.
My mom could be having the worst day of her life, and when that phone rang and there was a reservation on the other end, she’d be cheery, and bubbly, and even if there was a nor-easter blowing in, the sky would be robin’s egg blue.
Choosing to be the face of Pine Island Games breached the wall between my personal life, and personal social media and the company and brand.
I try to be authentic and vulnerable on this blog, and on our social media.
But, sometimes I have to put on a brave face. Sometimes I have to be a little curated.
At the very least, I am more thoughtful with how I interact with people and interpret what they say. I am less likely to react on the fly.
I have a thicker skin. Being on social media is a part of the job now, and sometimes - not often, but sometimes - people on social media are jerks.
All of this to say that we need to be conscious of our bandwidth, both in terms of time and focus, but also in terms of emotional capacity.
For all its millions of copies sold Stonemaier Games is still a small company, and for all our thousands of games sold, we’re a tiny company.
So, we have to budget the tasks that we take on, and be deliberate about what social platforms we maintain, and to what extent.
Where do you prefer to connect with people online?
