First thing's first, I don't trust people without a social account. I do admire people who tell me they are off the grid (although I did manage to find a lot of information online about someone who was not on social media because she wanted her private life to be private), but I don't buy that crap "I live in offline" stuff. It's just my thing, you don't have to agree with me.
But since you are reading this, I do assume that you are at least on one of the social networks so here it goes. On Facebook:
1. Put a profile picture
It's not that hard, in this smart phone age everyone has at least a selfie. Post that one. If you don't have a profile picture and your account is older than a day, then you are out. I do have to say that applies on Facebook to my private profile, because I do have a "business page". So on my private profile I have maybe 300 friends, but they are people I've interacted with at least once in the offline life. I don't have "a community" and that page is strictly personal. I am talking about that profile now, and on that profile I don't interact with people without a profile picture.
2. Have a profile picture or a cover or any of the pictures with your face on them
If you don't, you are out. I am a little bit hypocritical on this, because my own husband has a monkey as a profile picture, but I do take care of that taging him in all our photos so that he has at least one photo with his face on it and you are not talking with a robot.
3. Photoshopped pictures?
I'm not sure on this one because it is strictly your business what you do on your profile. I've heard that people try to picture a perfect life on social media, I've read studies about that, but up to now none of my friends do it, so it's fine. I guess I'm in the right bubble :)
4. Asking for my friendship without a message
This is for people I don't know. I get about 5 friend requests per day from people I don't know. I have that option activated, so you can send a friend request to me only if we have common friends, but even so I will not accept you as a friend without a message explaining who you are and why do you want to be friends. To me it seems obvious as to why I would want that, but I guess people are still in 2000 when Facebook meant as many friends as you could gather. As I've already explained, I am not interested in a community and I do have a page, so like that one.
5. Adding me into groups
I still haven't figured out how that can happen, but it did happen once and I was pissed. Who are you and how stupid can you be to do that? I don't have the knowledge about managing groups, I guess it matters the number of people in one group, but I don't care. I choose my own groups, based on my interests and not because someone has added me in some stupid group. And plus if you do manage a group and add people like that you have only to lose and I'm not your mother to explain you why.
6. Sending requests to like pages
On the same note as the previous point is this one. If you manage a page and you want more traction on that page post quality content, post beautiful pictures, post links relevant to the page's topic, but don't invite all your friend list to like it. I did that once for a friend's page (because I'm too stupid to do it for mine) and I've sent the request just to the friends that had a real interest in the topic of that page. To me that is the right way to do it.
7. Find a balance between posting five times a day or five times a year
Guilty of that, but I try to sort that out. Problem is that I am on Facebook for long periods of time only in the evening, or only on certain evenings. Otherwise, I will have a quick look on Facebook and then leave. But on those instances when I do spent more than 5 seconds on Facebook I find interesting things to share and I do. I know that I should not share 5 things (links, pictures, whatever) in bulk, but I do it. I'm not after likes so for me if one person finds the post relevant it's OK. It means I've done my job.
Should I tell you at this point that I'm talking about my personal way of handling social media and not my professional one? For the ways in which you do social media as a profession, there are other posts online, I'm sure of that.
Crossing to Instagram now, I have to say that I love Insta Stories. I love, love, love them. I am guilty of over posting on social media and Insta Stories are my escape :) That is because I love all the photos that I take and I do take a lot of photos and I can't decide which one is Instagram worthy. Also, on my personal online life I do share from Instagram to Facebook and Tweeter, I would share even on LinkedIn and YouTube if I could, that's how lazy I am.
On Instagram I have a personal profile, which up to two or three months ago was private, so I don't have a business profile. On those ones there are other commonsense rules.
1. People chasing likes
I am aware that the more followers an account has, the more stronger it is, but there are decent ways on getting followers and then there are others. To give you a personal example, I had a girl liking all my pictures on the first second, commenting and interacting with me, until I went on her profile and started following her. Then she stopped, like that, without a warning. Guess what happened? Unfollow, of course. I know this is a strategy in getting followers, but I will follow only profiles that I have an interest on. And I had an interest in her profile (because she was an expat in Luxembourg, too), but I was offended by her methods.
2. Follow robots
Only recently (actually I've discovered Instagram only a year ago) I found out that on Instagram there are robots and you can buy fictive followers. What is the point in that, I wonder? I guess that if you have a business profile it makes sense, but still why? Wouldn't you like to build an actual community of actual people who would interact with you, who would exchange ideas, thoughts and pictures? How do you build a business on fake followers? Do you know what they want?
3. Fake profiles
Again, I've studied this and it is a real thing, it is called "the most beautiful day" or something. Basically there are people with different online life than the offline ones. And to some extent it makes sense, because you share only the nice stuff, only the most beautiful pictures of yourself, so all profiles resemble a holiday, but what happens with the real you? In Luxembourg we have Insta Meetings and you do get a chance to meet the people you are following or interacting with on Instagram. I have to say that there is one person that is very different on Instagram than on real life. So fake, photoshopped pictures, fake everything. It was a real disappointment, but then again it's anyone's business how they live their life. To me that would be too much of an effort. I've already told you I am lazy :)
4. Who is watching my Insta Stories?
I see who watches my Insta Stories, but from time to time I get messages from Instagram with "more then 500 people watched your story", I have about 200 followers so who are those people? I do get there is the sum of views, but once I've counted by myself and I did not have more then 100. So who are those 400 people and where do they come from? Well I guess that is for me to discover, but if you have the answer, please enlighten me.
And that is it for now I guess. I don't have as many points on Instagram as I have on Facebook, although I do tend to sent more time on Instagram, but some points could be common to the two social networks, I guess.
I am aware that without any pictures this is a boring kilometric post, but if you made it this far, I thank you! If you liked my post and find it interesting please do share it on social media. You can find me at my fb. page: Dichisuri.ro
Raluca
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