Facebook: How to lose friends and influence people
So you're on Facebook... Put your hand up if your Facebook Profile is littered with 'friends' who you don't know, have never met and probably never will? While some people are happy with this, most are not and it can frustrate their use of the biggest of social networks.
You can imagine as a public relations and social media consultancy in Berkshire, Morgan PR is familier with the dilemma many face. They want to use Facebook for business while keeping their friendships private, together with those holiday snaps. Making 'friends' too easily has often diluted a profile so much that people are even abandoning them and starting again.
I look at my 350+ friends and there are plenty I have absolutely no idea who they are! I suspect they are among those who Facebook merrily suggested we have countless 'friends' in common and therefore should connect. Most have never engaged and indeed I have not with them, excepting the odd birthday wish. Those who do comment and engage are people I have, on the most part, met and know. I might even call them friends!
Incidentally, my own birthday provided further evidence that my so-called 'friends' on Facebook may not actually be that friendly! I had lots of birthday wishes on Facebook (and Twitter!) And they came almost exclusively from people I would call proper friends and business folks I know rather well. Yet the vast majority of my 'friends' let my 40th pass by with comment!
Now I enjoyed my birthday with fine friends and equally fine Champagne and have no sour grapes! Yet clearly not all of these 'friends' are friends! What benefit am I deriving from having them in my closest network, other than restricting what I might want to share on my Facebook Profile lest it be seen by strangers. I would rather have a small and powerful network of Facebook friends on my Facebook Profile.
I've also been looking at 'See Friendship' which Facebook offers. Clicking this shows how much you have engaged with a particular friend and guess what? Once again I found that in the majority of cases there was only engagement between myself and friends. I did find more than 20 cases where I had commented, and 'liked', sometimes more than once, on a new 'friend' but seen now engagement in return - which smacks of someone collecting 'friends' in the way I did Panini Football stickers during the 1982 World Cup (and I didn't even like football!).
Finally, I realised I had hidden dozens of friends' feeds because their updates had annoyed me! Either they had been too pushy with sales, had been offensive or the comments of their friends would not be the kind I wanted to see. Reviewing these hidden accounts I realised once again, I didn't really know any of those I had chosen to hide.
I felt that many of my 'friends' would be better placed clicking the 'Like' button for Morgan PR's Facebook Page and I would happily 'Like' any of their pages and we could keep a lighter link with one another without faking being friends. I began to think how I would go about this epic transfer of over 200 'friends' when I was the lovely Debra Mann asked me to speak about Facebook at the Variety Events Social Media Conference in Berkshire in February 2011 and felt a social media experiment coming on! I coined the phrase 'Facebook: How to Lose Friends and Influence People'.
So while I will regularly blog about my progress as I lose friends and try and influence people into 'liking' my Facebook Page, it will be at this event where I reveal in person what happened! Obviously this is a workshop and those lucky enough to attend will also discover:
- How it begins with a Facebook Profile
- How to set up a Facebook Page and get people to 'Like' it
- What to do when a stranger tries to make friends
- Where Facebook Groups fit in.
- Why Facebook Adverts are better than Google Adwords
- Bonus! Discover how to banish Farmville and other time wasting games from your Facebook updates!
The Berkshire Social Media Conference is sure to be a major social networking event in 2011 and I will be appearing as a founder member of The Social Media Guys, a talented trio of experienced social media enthusiasts, all of whom are speaking at this event. Graham Jones will be talking about LinkedIn and Ant Hodges will be focused on Twitter.
Incidentally, if you book your seat at 2011's most exciting Social Media Conference in Berkshire before December 31st you enjoy £60 off the ticket price!
What do you think? Tell us in the comments below!