Overwhelm – an Emotion?

I’ve been reading Tara Hunt’s The Whuffie Factor about online social capital and I’m feeling quite overwhelmed by it all. Of course, it all makes perfect sense to me as I’ve worked very hard to develop a good reputation for myself as an ambassador for emotional intelligence and as a person who delivers on promises, etc.

I know how quickly and easily that reputation is damaged for example, when I make a mistake like coming on too strong, being late for a conference talk, or misreading my audience (yes, unfortunately these things have happened! ;-) I understand social capital and it follows that it is the same online. It’s really how people (hopefully in your target market) feel about you and being intentional about that – how do you want people to feel about you? You get a ‘rep’ online as well as in real life.

But for a baby boomer like me (tail end ;-) it’s more difficult to wrap my mind around all the technical aspects of building social capital and I feel a bit anxious about it all. There are the different social media websites that must all be updated and yes I know about programs like TweetDeck, etc., but still, you have to be on top of these things and I don’t know if I’m up for the challenge. I guess I’ll have to be.

Is ‘overwhelm’ an emotion? I don’t think so. I think we use it to mean ‘anxious’, ‘fearful’, or other emotion that prevents or limits our effectiveness in the required task – in this case, the required task is to get on it and learn about all these various forms of social media and get busy writing and staying on top of it all and not let overwhelm get in the way.