Like many, when I first started using Facebook I would accept most friend invitations even if they were from people I’d not met or didn’t have any connection to. I’d also accept friends of friends – people that were connected to people I actually do know. “Oh… we have 20 ‘friends’ in common – I guess I should accept your invitation”. Just led to more and more people I did not know in my friends list. About 6 months ago I stopped automatically accepting and ended up with a big list of request that I was unsure what to do with. Friend requests lay pending… for the longest time. You see here was my issue: I use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn… but I’d been using them all without a lot of thought as to who was connected to me in each network and what I was sharing. It was time to strategise so that a) I could be more focused and b) the conversations I was having in each network were the most relevant to those I was connected to. Starting to cull contacts – Strategically So… what to do with these contact and potential contacts? Here’s my plan for sorting friends, contacts and followers in my social networks. I’m sharing it in hope that if you too want a more strategic approach and to make more sense of your online networks, that this may serve as a thought-starter. Linked In If you’re a professional contact who I do not know and perhaps have not exchanged communication with, but you’re interested in connecting with me professionally, then let’s do that on LinkedIn. While LinkedIn gets feeds from my blog, it doesn’t usually get the personal bits and pieces of information that may be better suited for my Facebook or Twitter friends. I also use LinkedIn’s Q&A service to do market research and connect with experts. This morning I’ve been un-finding some of the contacts who, while I’d like to be connected with, are not actual friends and perhaps would not be interested in meeting up at the Australian Businesswomen’s Network page… I’m taking not of their names and will go search for them in LinkedIn. My focus on LinkedIn is PROFESSIONAL. Twitter I’m happy to connect with business contacts, customers, thought-leaders, like-minded folks on Twitter. Twitter is where I combine business and personal the most… and because of the type of forum that Twitter is, I feel comfortable sharing with you business resources as well as the latest great restaurant that I may want to recommend. My focus here is PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL.
Facebook Facebook allows us to separate our personal and professional communications by using the Friends and Pages functions. I’m using the Friends function to connect with people I know or have met whether face to face or virtually and with whom I have some level of relationship. Pages (and specifically The Australian Businesswomen’s Network page) is where men and women interested business, mentoring, training, networking, learning and connecting with other women in business can connect and share information. (Like many I think Fans is an awkward name for this function – but it is what it is… and so we work with it!)
