How I'm managing my social media connections
I got a question from someone about how to manage our social media connections, mostly on professional networks. I would say that there is no unique way of doing it, even if a social media expert suggests you to do it one way, you need to find what make sense for you. Since there is no right answer, I still wanted to write about how I personally manage the networks I'm using the most: LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
As you know, LinkedIn is a professional network: basically, the place where you put your CV (it's my only CV since a couple of years), and where you should connect with people you work with, either colleagues, customers or people you know in your industry. On my side, I decided to accept anybody as a connection. It may not be the best practice here, but in the past it served me well: you never know when someone in your network, that you don't know in person, may help you or may need your help. Of course, once in a while I got someone who spam me, but there is an option to remove connections. Since I'm using LinkedIn to promote my blog posts, and any URL related to my industry, it gives me the opportunity to reach more people. It also gave me the opportunity to get more exposure when I was looking for a job, and get nice job offers from people I didn't know at all, but whom saw my profile because we were connected.
In Twitter, there is no real connection like in LinkedIn or Facebook: you can follow me, and I don't have to follow you, or vice versa. I really like that model as it gives me the opportunity to follow who I want, and others to follow me if they want. I'm not playing the game of, I'll follow you if you follow me, or I'll unfollow you if you don't follow me after. Too often people do this with me: they follow me, but when they see I don't follow them back, they unfollow me. Personally, I found this attitude very stupid: what changed? Is my content not interesting anymore because I don't follow you? Of course, I'm publishing a lot of things on Twitter, but this may be another post: a Twitter manifesto. So on Twitter, I'll follow you if I find you interesting, that's it! It's not because I know you that I'll follow you. It's not also that you are not an interesting person, but if you are not tweeting about topics that I'm looking for on this network, that won't happen. I can also follow you for a while, and if I see that your content is not for me, I'll unfollow you. I'm following a very low number of people on Twitter, so don't be upset; it's a choice I made!
I have a hate love relationship with Facebook. Actually, I don't like Facebook, and I deleted my account 1-2 years ago. The problem is that so many things are happening there that I didn't really have the choice to come back: I was missing all personal, and professional events! On that note, I'm publishing all my tweets on Facebook to keep it alive, so some people don't like it, but theyalways have the choice to remove me as a friend. Talking about friends, I don't know why, but I kept the term as it is on Facebook so that means that if we don't know each other in person, and that we don't have at least a small conversation together, I won't accept your friendship request. I also don't send requests quite often, so feel free to add me if we know each other face to face.
So this is quite simple, and the way I'm managing my connection on those three social networks. Again that is personal way of managing them, and I'm not saying at all that you should do it like this. On your side, how do you manage your social media connection? Did I miss important services you would like me to talk about? Is there something you think I could improve in my way of managing those? Share your thoughts!