So you have noticed a flurry of people sending you notes to connect on Facebook. But they haven't put anything about themselves when sending you an invitation to connect.
So how do you decide who to accept as a friend on Facebook?
That's a question pondered a few weeks ago when looking through a list of invitations.
I always recommend that when you look to connect on Facebook or LinkedIn where you have the opportunity to customise a message to the person you are connecting with that you personalise the message based on what you know about the person and their interests.
Think about networking offline - if you make a phone call to someone who you don't know, don't you spend a moment or two striking up a conversation that demonstrates how you might be connected or why you want to speak with them?
But that doesn't mean that everyone does the same when inviting you to become a member of their online social network.
When I was recently accepting Facebook friends, I decided that some of my criteria would be if there was no personal photo and instead a brand logo I would not add them - that was based on the fact that as Facebook advises, Facebook profiles are about connecting with people - Groups and Pages are where you promote your business.
Secondly if I could not access their profile or a summary profile about who they are then I usually won't connect.
You see some people see social networking being a numbers game - the more people in the your network the better. I take a different view - learned from several years of writing a news letter for my 'Biz Growth' community. I would much rather have a smaller number of subscribers to my newsletter of people really interested in my articles and podcasts than a huge unresponsive community.
I also Tweeted the question to my network and asked other people how they make a decision on who to accept as a friend on Facebook.
Here are their responses:
Alex Bellinger (@alexbellinger) said that he is discriminating on Twitter but has given up on Facebook
Becky Cortino (@BeckyCortino) likes to know why someone is on Facebook by reading their profile if she accepts them as a friend on Facebook
Britrock (@britrock) mentions that he uses the rule that if he has received a greeting from the person connecting that is a deciding factor
Megan Fitzgerald (@meganfitzgerald) is more likely to accept someone as a friend if they have mutual friends - but if there are no mutual friends and no profile she probably won't connect with the person
Luke Harvey- Palmer (@lukefrombuzzle) and Cheryl Antier (@Cheryl_Antier) liked my criteria
So what are your thoughts on who to friend on Facebook? What do you do when connecting with someone for the first time in an online social network? I'd certainly appreciate your insights.
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