Social networking tips for the anti-social – #30DSM: Day 8 – 30 Days of Social Media

Are you an anti-social social networker?

While social networking (and your participation in it) could have me assume that you want to connect with others and be social — what’s the best way to approach social networking if you want to maintain privacy or if you’re typically shy and reserved?

The great thing about social networking is that you can choose your level of engagement. You can also be very active, while maintaining privacy and control over who you connect with and how you interact.

Even if you’re shy, not used to (or wanting) the spotlight or like to listen more than speak, you can still use social networks to share your expertise, show that you know your stuff in your own niche and connect with others with others of similar interests.

Being social (even if you are a little anti-social)

One of the keys to success in social media (in my experience)  is engaging with others. Social media works when the conversations are going two ways.

Here are some levels of engagement that allow you to participate in conversations easily:

• Don’t like banal chit chat? There’s no need to engage in conversations for the sake of it. Find and join conversations on subjects in which you have expertise and want to contribute. e.g. find where people are talking about something you know about and comment. Visit LinkedIn and find questions that you can easily answer and show your expertise.
• Use social media tools that suit your level of comfort. e.g. Don’t feel that you have to use video or be a podcaster to be effective using social media. Blog, Comment on Blogs, participate in forums, share links to items your audience will find of use. (Note: If you want to use video but the thought of being on camera scares you, make mini-movies using Powerpoint, animation and maybe add voice. )
• Even if you don’t originate a lot of comments/content, you may reweet/share what others are saying that you find useful. Either way your activity is moving the conversations through the social network sphere.

How private should you be on social networks?

Facebook has many levels of privacy and offers you a lot of flexibility. You can set rules across your entire profile, or screen off what individual ‘friends’ can see.

My philosophy (recently adopted and now in place) is that I only maintain the friend status on Facebook with people that I know personally and who are at some level friends or family. This allows me to share personal titbits without being concerned that I’m not presenting my professional business image. It also means that the feed I see is not filled with promotional posts from marketers.

I use the Pages function for business. The Australian Businesswomen’s Network page is a hive of business conversation and where I interact with ABN members and colleagues who are fans of the Facebook page.

Both Twitter and Facebook allow you to set your settings to full privacy but my question is; IF you are hoping to grow your network or establish thought-leadership in your niche – will being totally private allow you to do this? Only you can determine that.

If you’re using Twitter for business and have your settings set to private, it’s unlikely too many customers, colleagues will bother to ask for permission to follow you. It’s too much effort.

If you’re using it for business I suggest that leave your Twitter settings open. Or, set up two accounts – one for business and one for communicating with personal contacts.

Are you being anti-social?

Let’s have a look at some ways that we may be deemed to be anti social…

Is it anti social to not follow back?

I am not a fan of auto-following on Twitter. There’s no rule that stays that you have to follow those that follow you. And, I don’t believe it is antisocial not to follow back. To me, it’s about strategy.

When I first started using Twitter I had auto follow on. All that did was create a lot of noise in my Twitter stream.

Now I go through every new follower’s profile and if it seems we’ll have some common interests and reason for being connected then I follow them back. (I am, however, very behind in doing this and have a folder on my desk of over 1000 people that I need to go check out.)

Also, I have no goal to have as many followers as possible. I have a goal to have connections with those that I can add value to and with whom I have shared interests. So, if anyone will follow me only on the condition that I follow back, we are probably not going to stay connected on social networks.

Should I be your Facebook friend?

I’m sure you get requests from people you don’t really know asking to be your friend on Facebook. Ino longer accept Facebook friend invitations from people are are not friends and family. It’s not personal – it’s that I want to connect with business contacts over at my professional ABN Facebook page. I find myself explaining why and hoping that if they truly want to connect then they’ll come over and join the ABN Facebook page where we can interact freely.

I’ll explain more about my Friends/Pages strategy in a coming post, but let’s just say for now that I like to use the Friend feature keeping the common meaning of ‘friend’ in mind. Pages still allow me to converse and connect in a professional environment.

My Personal Profile is still mostly open and visible to pretty much anyone for the moment.

Is it anti-social to set my profiles to private?

It depends on why you have it on private. If it’s because you’re being selective about who you connect with, then fine, keep it private. If you don’t have a good reason for having your settings to private, then revisit your social networking goals and choose clearly what will work for you.

TODAY’S TASK

Look at your social network privacy settings. Evaluate if they are serving your goals for social media, and if not, revise them.

Happy networking. Until tomorrow, Suzi

P.S. Do keep in mind that your social network participation is indexed by search engines and remains available online for a long time.  Think before tweeting