Free Yourself From Email Notifications and Alerts!

If you've recently joined several social networking sites, you may have found that email notifications are flooding your inbox to the point that you're having a hard time finding and reading your other important emails. Here are some solutions to help manage these notifications.

The most obvious solution is to simply log in to each social media account that you use (particularly the sites sending you the most email alerts) and modify your account settings to eliminate, or at least reduce, the number of notifications you're receiving. It's tempting to remove all email notifications, but be careful not to eliminate all types of notifications, such as those that don't appear in your email inbox but are sent to you directly on the site. This is particularly true for Facebook.

You may find it easier just to reduce the number of email alerts you receive - especially if you're new to social media - rather than eliminate them completely. These notifications serve an important purpose: to remind you that you created an account and that you should check it from time to time to respond to people trying to interact with you through social media. Creating a profile on a social network and failing to answer those who try to interact with you on that profile is considered just as impolite as never returning a phone call, email or letter, or refusing to say hello to someone who greets you. Besides, you'll never learn how to use your account if you don't log into it once in a while! It's important to find a happy medium.

In our opinion, when first starting to use social media it's important to keep the following email notifications:

On Facebook:

• when someone sends you a message,
• when someone sends you a friend request,
• when someone accepts your friend request,
• when you join a group,
• when someone tags you in a photo,
• when someone posts to your wall or Timeline.

(Click here to learn more about managing your Facebook email notifications)

On Twitter:

• when someone mentions you,
• when someone sends you a direct message,
• when someone retweets one of your messages.

On LinkedIn:

• when someone sends you a message,
• when someone sends you an invitation to connect,
• when someone accepts your invitation to connect,
• when someone recommends you,
• when someone asks you for a recommendation,
• when someone asks you for an introduction,
• when someone responds to your introduction request.

(You can learn more about managing your LinkedIn email preferences here on the site).

If you keep only these email alerts, you should receive a reasonable amount while maintaining an incentive and several reminders in your email inbox to go back to your social media profiles.

Once you've mastered the many social media sites that you use and have incorporated them into your internet routine, it's possible that you'll find (even with these limited alerts) that your email inbox is being bombarded with notifications. You may be tempted to get rid of them for good. There's actually a much faster way to do this without disabling all email notifications in each site's settings. You can simply create filters (in Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) or rules (in Outlook) that will place all notification emails in a separate folder from your inbox, which will allow you to have access to them at all times without polluting your inbox.

If you're comfortable with social media and create a profile on a new site, we recommend this approach as you get used to the site and its functions.