As the new year rolls in, I’ve been thinking of how I will be using social media sites, which ones are offering me the benefits I want and how I can use them more efficiently going forward.

In 2012 I closed my Facebook account, my Instagram account and my FriendFeed account. The reason behind each one differ slightly but in its core they answer the same question.

“Why stay?”

Ryan Block has a good article on this theme, and he asks:

People wondering what there is to gain by thinning their online accounts sometimes ask: “Why quit?” Instead, I think every once in a while we should all ask ourselves: “Why stay?”

What are you getting from that social site? Do you care or not care to invest time in it?

I personally have a limited amount of time during the day where I can check and contribute to the social networks I’m part of. I also want to have the most impact and get feedback on my activity. Following those general guidelines here are the rules I will live by for my social media usage on 2013.

1. I won’t promote Mashable, Techcrunch or any other “major blog” links on any of my social media sites. Instead I will promote and start a dialogue with individual blogs. I will clean my Google Reader feeds to reflect this change (yes, I still use Google Reader). I will still be able to consume the content of the major blogs using Flipboard. If you have any suggestions of great individual voices to read, please leave a note on the comments.
2. I will use my Twitter account to post short thoughts that reveal myself more, instead of just pushing links. I will also stop following users who just push links without adding any commentary around it.
3. I will increase the use of my Tumblr for short blog posts and sharing of content. Tumblr will also be my main conduit for sharing photographs — replacing Instagram — and will promote that content selectively via Twitter.
4. I will use my Google+ account for people I know in real life, as I had been using Facebook. That means I will uncircle most of the people I have today with a few exceptions. I know that most of my friends and family are still not in Google+, but I have slowly been seeing more of them using it. To interact with people I don’t know IRL, I will use the new Google+ communities, which are perfect for that kind of interaction (I’m looking at you, FriendFeed Google+ community).
5. I will continue writing long form articles here on jungleg.com. I will also do my best to post at least once a week on 2013, even if it’s a short paragraph.
6. I need to cancel my subscription to the Dollar Shave Club. Not social media related, but I need to remind myself somehow. Their product is good quality, but I have more blades than what I will need in a year.

This is it. Nothing really hard, but I think keeping it simple makes it more attainable.

What about you? Are you changing the way you consume social media in 2013?

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