Ths single most important thing social media marketers can do is...

SHUT UP.

No, seriously.

I get pitched 3-4 times/week from people offering to teach me how to blog... from people offering me how to use Twitter via Twitter... from people offering to help me on Facebook... from people pitching their abilities on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

ARG.  SHUT UP.

Let me give you some tips:

I've had this blog for over 4 years and it has 550+ posts.  While I'd like to grow the traffic (who wouldn't!?), odds are I've been blogging longer than you have and quite possibly have more traffic.

While I've never taken Twitter followers as a measure of success, I'd put money on my 900+ before your 100 any day.  To the best of my knowledge, no more than a handful of those people are the results of auto-follows, so apparently I say something useful/entertaining/etc to more than a few of them.

Finally, I use Facebook as my own personal self-updating Rolodex, to know what is going on where, and what my friends are up to.  I don't use it as a marketing platform and have no interest to do so.

LEAVE ME ALONE.

Last week I noticed the current flood of traffic on my Twitter stream... to the point where I was missing the Tweets of people whom I like and enjoy conversing with.  I spent 30 minutes or so and went through the 700+ people I was following on Twitter and removed almost everyone that described themselves as a "social media marketer" or an "online marketer".  I went down to just over 600 people.

But the result was amazing.  The clutter on my feed disappeared.  I suddenly saw the useful Tweets and was able to engage with friends and contacts all over the place.  Suddenly, I wasn't so overwhelmed.

And the constant stream of "Tips for Social Media Marketers!" posts simply disappeared...

Ah... the silence.

*  Picture used without permission... which makes me nervous. The LAST person on my "People to Tick Off" list is Samuel L Jackson. No, seriously, please don't hurt me Mr Jackson... er... Sir.