If you’ve ever felt like you’re spending too much time on social media, or it’s a waste of time, you’re not alone. While social media is a powerful communication tool and can be a vital part of your daily routine, it’s easy to fall into the trap of spending too much time at it.

So here are some rules to set for your social media activity to help you avoid social media burnout.

I received an email from Google yesterday stating that they are shutting down Sidewiki. The email included instructions on how to archive my entries, so I grabbed them and decided to turn them into a blog post.

For those who don’t know, Sidewiki was a tool that allowed visitors to any website to input a post about the web page they were visiting, using a browser extension. The comment or post that was added to Sidewiki was then available for anyone visiting that page, who also had the Sidewiki tool installed on their browser.

Google is currently in the process of a massive restructure of their tools, retiring some like Sidewiki and Buzz, while at the same time enhancing others such as Gmail and Reader. It’s good to see Google is still working hard to improve user experience.

Using Twitter as a marketing tool is really not hard to do, but it does take quite a bit of work. Keep in mind that online marketing is not a one-time event. You can not expect results if you simply run a single campaign for a couple weeks and then stop. Even with Pay-per-click advertising you will only get results as long as you are running the campaign. So remember with Internet marketing it’s about long term commitment and consistency.

Point two, online marketing can not be turned on and left idle if you want to benefit from it. It is a must that you maintain a continuous connection with your target audience, even if nobody is listening. Persistence is a key component to a successful campaign so be prepared to work your campaign a minimum of 2 to 3 times per week and several times every day if possible.

I’ve been running Internet marketing campaigns for several years and have found that the best results are obtained when you think of it as a marathon and not a sprint. A phrase I always liked is “it doesn’t matter how you start, it only matters how you finish”. In other words starting strong is good, but maintaining a strong steady pace is far more important to achieving your goals.

How does this apply to Twitter? Don’t post 10 times in one day and then nothing for the next three weeks. Instead, breakup your posts and do one or two every other day. maintaining a constant connection with your readers “followers in Twitter’s case” is more likely to bring positive results then if you just reach out to them occasionally. Not that an occasional message is a bad thing, but that’s better applied to a newsletter or blog post, not social networking but that’s a different topic.