If you’re like me, you’re an active member of many social communities. This is great if you don’t have a real life and you spend all your time on the computer. If you do like to get out occasionally, however, you will not be able to spend indefinite amounts of time equally across all networks and need to be able to optimize your social networking time. The hardest part about doing this is knowing how to prioritize which networks to spend more time on and which ones you can just glance at.

The best way to choose your networks is to compare enjoyment to usefulness – the end goal being able to find the networks that you really like using that give you the most bang for your buck.

You may really enjoy being on Sphinn and find some great articles but you don’t get much traffic to your own sites – even when your stories go hot. Likewise, you may hate using Digg but see server-crashing results when you make it to Digg’s front page.

Finding the right balance will help you focus your time spent so you will still be able to effectively use social media without letting it take over your life. When you prioritize correctly your social networking time will not feel like work and even with minimal time spent you can still see some of the awesome benefits social networking has to offer your sites.