I had an interesting conversation with a very well know magazine this week. They asked me; “How can people switch off the noise in social media?”. This was a question I hadn’t come across much in my 7 years of working in social media but one most companies need to know the answer to.
There is a fantastic video which has gone viral where someone is talking about their views on social and technology. It’s a great view on how we are engulfed in the social world and actually forget what real life is and how we are so attached to our mobiles. You can watch this video here.
As a business, there are some tips and tricks you can do to switch off your social media. There is a great piece of software called Anti-Social which allows you to be more productive by switching off your social media. This is a great starting point for any business who want to take a step back from social media and focus on their physical surroundings. 
You might find yourself wanting to decide what you want to turn off social media wise, especially when it comes to Facebook. Although you may be friends with someone on Facebook, you don’t necessarily want to see all of their meaningless updates. To turn this off, click on the arrow in the box of the Facebook post and select the “unfollow” option.
Looking at Twitter, you might want to follow a large number of users but to really tune in to what matters to your business, you can create lists. Lists allow you to create mini news feeds based on your chosen users. If you want to clear out unwanted followers, use Manage Flitter and if you want to validate people who follow you, you can use TrueTwit.
Echofan is another great tool which allows you to focus on certain tweets inside of Twitter so that you never have to read the same tweet more than once and also allows you to finetune your notifications.
Sometimes it’s good to switch off social media but it is important to remember from a business perspective that being socially active is part of any company’s online voice and integrated into your marketing strategy and the decision to turn off certain social features, may hinder your need to “listen” to what your customers or potential customers are saying about you or your competitors.