Here’s Me and My Web Shadow-author Antony Mayfield on how he uses difference networks including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and makes connections between each. Antony has created a category on his blog for updates about the book.
How do you segment personal networks on Facebook versus LinkedIn versus Twitter?
This is different for everyone, and people need to work out what works for them based on what’s useful for them and those in their networks.
What works for me is:
- Facebook: Is a personal space for me, mainly for friends and family. I restrict what people see about me and things I post there beyond that network of people, partly for privacy, but mostly so that I don’t have to feel too self-conscious about posting endless updates about family life, running, or whatever, which will be boring or even irritating to many people in that volume. Colleagues and acquaintances that I “friend” on Facebook see some content, but not everything – this isn’t a business networking space for me. It feels a little harsh dividing out people into groups or degrees of closeness, but it is necessary to do so in order to make the network useful for you and them.
- Twitter: Twitter is a very special network for me. It’s mainly for sharing thoughts about what is happening right now and getting those amazing moments of serendipity when someone posts a link or a thought that is precisely relevant to me in that moment. How I manage this network is simple: I follow people who are interesting to me at that time, and unfollow those who seem to be less relevant at the moment. I allow anyone except blatant spammers and bots to follow me (I block them) and try hard not to be offended if they unfollow me – appreciating that I might not be useful to them right at that moment.
- LinkedIn: As my blog is my public notebook, LinkedIn is my public contact book, biograph and a functional, business networking space. I don’t cross-post to Twitter as I don’t think most people hang out there like they do in Facebook or Twitter as much and the volume of posts would be irritating. I’ll connect with anyone who seems interesting and relevant, but mostly people who I have met. There’s no real need to segment networks in this space, beyond giving endorsements only to people I have actually worked with and not connecting with people I have reason not to trust.
Should bloggers exercise caution in promoting their content across different networks, based on audience?
It’s a matter of taste and social sensibilities really. “If in doubt, pull don’t push” was a mantra in the social media team at iCrossing for a while, meaning yes, be cautious, because if you don’t understand a network or a space properly a clumsy promotion could do more harm than good for your reputation. Better to earn attention and pull in attention via recommendations, links and most of all by developing good, durable networks of likeminded people.
That’s not to say don’t be pushy – most commentators on a post on Mashable I wrote recently were promoting a site, service or book related to the topic – so I guess that is acceptable in that space. Some of them were certainly useful to me and no one in the Mashable community saw fit to challenge them.
What’s your view of syncing status updates between Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?
For some people this works well. They tend to be people who are happy living very open lives online. Like a lot of people, I choose to divide those networks a little.
I cross-post manually between these three networks when I think there is something. That’s actually not that often. I like to like status updates on LinkedIn for a while, for instance, and it will usually be something about a work related event, or a trip I am making that might be useful to people in that work-focussed context. Also, I think my less social media focussed friends and family in Facebook would get irritated by the frequency and content of my Twitter posts.
Again, though – how you manage this is based on how it works for you and what is useful.