From Public to Private

Should I post Publicly or Privately on social networks? (see update at bottom)

That seems to be the first question social media users have to ask them themselves. After almost 10 years of social media participation, I have finally answered the question for myself.

I was an early adopter of Facebook (but was out of college so I had to wait until they opened it up to the public) and of Twitter. I only accepted people I KNEW into Facebook. High school, college, childhood friends and family or people I worked with.

I signed up for Twitter and Gary Vaynerchuck was on of my first followers and the ability to connect and have short conversations with him about favorite wines or "stream of consciousness tweeting" during a Razorback football game was tons of fun. I even connected with news anchors and my tweets were regularly featured on TV locally.

Gary Vaynerchuck was big into the "creating your brand" and branding yourself. He even wrote a book about it! I was too. At the time, I was a real estate agent and doing everything I could to become KNOWN online as THE agent in Northwest Arkansas. I received a lot of web traffic and leads, so it was working! Then, as a Business Broker, I had to be a little more careful about what I shared & who I shared it with.

Fast forward a few years: We opened a restaurant. Again, I thought it would be a good idea to be as public as possible to promote the business and get it off the ground. That worked too. We have more people following our restaurants Facebook page than any other local Facebook page! That's a pretty cool stat! Even more than the local college! I was able to connect with hundreds and hundreds of Foodies, which I LOVED! But after amassing thousands of followers, friends, & connections, I began to moderate myself too much.

I changed. As I became a G+ user, (read about that here) I started to share only with "my circles" -- users who I have accepted into my social network and not necessarily those who have added me. The reason was that I was catching myself temper and adjust my posts because they were going to be public. So instead of sharing specifics about a dining experience I had at a local restaurant and discussing how this restaurant could do this or that to improve. I would only post, "I wish all restaurants would focus on services and quality of food as much as we do." That isn't informative, constructive, or helpful. It is too vague to be interesting. I thought more and more about Facebook & Twitter... I was doing the same thing on those networks. I wouldn't share photos with my family on Facebook because I didn't want to share my family photos with "friends" I have in high school who barely know me or former staff that I may have forgotten to "unfriend" when they quit. My private life is supposed to be private, but how can I share my life JUST with those I want to??

The Lockdown

twitter: As I approached 1000 followers on Twitter, I began to wonder about "all of these people" who were following me and reading what I was saying. I immediately jettisoned almost 200 users who were companies, spam, or weirdos that I had no connection with. I am in the process of filtering even more! I only follow about half that many users who I follow and started to "weed through" them as well. Now, I am also creating lists of my followers, divided by interests and topics they post about. I will only follow those who I want constant updates from on my main stream. I can check my lists for others.

facebook: I locked it down completely and then chose what to open up to friends only. I also banned a few users. Then, I created a list to share my life with. These are friends and family who know me now and people who I am CLOSE to. I also created an "extended share" list who have old friends and distant relatives that I want to share some things with, but not everything. Now, I can chose who to share my life with.

What about building the brand and marketing??

I can still do that! Now with "pages" on Facebook & G+, each company can have their own page and twitter account. Now, the brand is the company and THAT is a sellable asset in the future.

For my own hobbies and interest, I can still share with everyone I choose to. I believe that a small group of active and engaged followers is far better than a mass of people who may or maynot really care. The hard part is that I have to continue to reach out to everyone I wish to connect with. I have to become an "active" participant in the discussion instead of a passive user. I don't think that is a bad thing at all and wish more people would do the same thing. It would help get rid of a lot of meaningless "chatter" and might provoke more focused discussion.

Moving my personal social steams from "wasted time attempting to find things that matter" to "engaged & focused discussion on topics I care about from people I care about" is something I am REALLY looking forward to participating in!

UPDATE

Since this post, I have starting using an application called "Path". See my post here.

G+

I joined GooglePlus (G+) in beta. At the time, ONLY tech users were active on G+. I invited several friends, but none of them are active G+ users. The reason was simple: noone else they knew where on G+ and I'm sure the just now got their parents used to Facebook! I really didn't use it much either. The point of the entire "social" network was lost on me due to the lack of integration into other google servcies and users that I had a real relationship with. It was all "tech industry" heavy and tech news posts filled my stream.

This was useless for me. I have a google reader stream FULL of the sources everyone was posting, so I already read them. I read it daily on Flipboard. G+ was just another Flipboard or "GoogleReader Tech" Stream that was curated by its users.

And then it happened: I found other Foodies on G+! Not just people that like food, but people who wrote about food, posted photos of food and even cooked LIVE via Google Hangout. Now THIS was something I could get in to and VERY excited about. I created a circle of these Foodies. With a few interatctions, I was circled in other people's G+ circles and people began sharing those circles and vuala a G+ user was born!

What was the switch that flipped?

Connection with like minded users -- amateurs, professionals, and everyone inbetween. I still have some difficulty starting a conversation, but commenting on their posts can often lead to awesome discussion & interaction (not limited to 140 characters). The problem now is that there are SO MANY people following SO MANY other people that your comment or post can be easily lost similar to other social networks.

Circles will Win

In the future, more people will began limited their circles and posts will become deeper & more involved. I've also started organizing and sorting my circles into "Food Posters" and "Foodies" (those who love to read about food) and "Shared Foodies" (foodie circles that have been shared by others). I have a circle, in a circle, in a circle. Here is a little graphic that will help explain what I mean:

I'd love to hear your comments about how you are organizing your circles and what you think about G+! Find me on G+ and put me in your FOOD & Tech circles!