Facebook is a powerful personal branding tool. Your posts say a lot about you. Are you saying the right thing? The key to all virtual communication is to do everything in moderation. Every detail is not important to share. Every photo documenting your life does not need to be posted. Keep reading to see if you fall in one of these categories.
The “Tell You Everything” Tell All. “Slept 8 whole hours!” “Had oatmeal for breakfast.” “Paid my bills.” If you think this is fascinating, it’s not. While some events may be interesting, your multiple Facebook friends probably don’t care if you’re going to sleep or about every meal you had to eat today.
The “My Life is Awesome” Person. We all have triumphs that we want to let people in on. In some cases, Facebook is a great way to let people know something special that is going on. Keep in mind though, after a while your friends get sick of you rubbing it in that you just got a promotion, have a new car, your relationship is perfect, and are going on yet another vacation.
The Over-Friender. People with friends between 150-300 are believable. You have high-school, college and post-grad friends. Those of you who are more social can have in the 300-400 range. Those of you with 500, 600, 700 + friends…you’re not fooling anyone. You can’t possibly care what all of those people are doing. Meeting someone in line at the grocery store does not mean you need to immediately find and friend them on Facebook.
The Tell-It-All Person. “Hitting up Walgreens for tampons.” While that is true, no one in your social network wants to know that information. In fact, you probably lose friends weekly for the inappropriate posts. If you have a fight with your spouse, find out a friend is cheating, or have a weird mole that needs to be checked out…please keep that information limited to the people who actually need to know.
The “Needs a Dictionary” Person. “R U going 2 go 2 the seminar 2 get new biz on friday?” While the rules of digital speak are different than writing an essay, does it really take that much more effort to spell out the word “you” or capitalize the day of the week?
The Reporter. “Kate Gosselin is causing so much drama on ‘Dancing with the Stars” is not something you should be concerned with posting. In fact, if people really want to read that information they’ll check out people.com. With all of the ways to get news these days – text message alerts, daily email updates, google alerts, not to mention countless websites for every subject matter possible, do not kid yourself in thinking you are or need to be the source of people’s news.
The “Debbie Downer” Person. “My life sucks!” “Could today get any worse?” “I can’t wait until this week is over.” We all have bad things happen to us. If you feel the need to talk about it, call a friend or send an email. Don’t bring the rest of us down.
The “Photo Freak” Person. Pictures from an event are always fun to see on Facebook. Pictures of your friend at an event spilling their drink and falling over are not. Facebook is a public place, please don’t prevent your friends from getting a job or being judged by their current colleagues because every moment of their personal life is publicized and posted immediately courtesy of you.
The “Event Sender/Game” Person. Between the games (Farmville, Café World, Mafia Wars), causes “Sign my petition” “Take this quiz,” gifts “Accept this heart” “Accept this drink” “Accept this pair of shoes,” and “Come to my event, even if you live in another state”…Facebook can be a full-time job. If you have the time to send out 50 hearts, shoes, invite everyone you know to an event and play games on Facebook all day, good for you. The rest of us however have jobs and responsibilities. Let Facebook be a site to connect and look at some photos, not something like going through your spam folder.
So what should you post on Facebook? Like we mentioned before, it’s anything so long as it’s in moderation. If it’s a celebration, go ahead and post those pictures. If it’s 60 pictures of your child or dog at once, don’t. We’re not saying you can’t post a picture of your child or dog, but we don’t need to see an entire album dedicated to their first bath. Listen to that little voice in your head. If you feel like you’re showing off, you’re over-indulging, you’re over-posting…you probably are.
What is branding? Heart & Mind® Branding.