I spent a few hours auditing and removing over 300+ of some of my Facebook friends after hitting the 5000 friend limit on Facebook’s personal pages. I had to go through the process of auditing friends A-Z twice, because for some reason many didnt show the first time or I missed somehow. I wanted to share what I learned with you here:
1. Maybe you dont think you’ll ever hit 5000, but its good to Vet people early on before you accept them. For so long I’d just add anyone who Friend Requested me. I WAS AN ACCEPTWHORE (my copyrighted word). It was a pain in the butt to go back through them all and delete them. Vet them early.. Don’t be an Acceptwhore!
2. If you dont accept someones personal Friend Request, send them a message to go to one of your fan pages with a link. I took and made a standard reply to copy and paste in Notepad on my desktop. “Thanks for the friend request, I’m full now but you can see my stream at http://www.facebook.com/TheChrisVossShow – Thanks!” They can develop a relationship with you on your Facebook Fan page and maybe they can possibly earn a place in your personal page. Friend Suggestions of friends from friends, I allowed those too much. NOW I dont accept them. In talking to many of them they still didnt know who I am or care. My new rule: unless YOU personally Friend Request me I wont let you though.
3. The Top Level of my hierarchy of keeping friends is those who comment and interact with me as friends. This will override the latter points I’ll make below, if they meet this criteria. I usually know who comments on my Facebook consistently. One way to flush out the lurkers who you want to keep, because they ARE at least looking at your wall, is to announce your cleaning house on people who dont comment. It’ll amaze you as to who is there.
70%-ish of people are voyeurs so dont punish people who dont chat. Some people are shy or think they cant be as funny etc. Thats they way that they ENGAGE. Just like someone told me, if I accidentally kick off an avid follower, they’ll probably notice and re-friend request me. If I saw that they had Liked my Fan Page I’ll keep em. They are a supporter. You can see it on their Info Tab if they Liked your Fan Page.
4. I decided to avoid people in the future who dont speak my language. I was amazed at people who were following me, but in looking at their wall they never spoke my language and therefore never interacted with me. My personal page is about personally communicating with me. Keep in mind though, some people can speak multiple languages you may want to ask if they can and what their interest is when they send you a friend request. If they can communicate with you keep them.
5. I focused my friends also to people living within my country. Mainly for my next level, which is people that I most likely have a chance to meet. Keep in mind, my over all rule, I STILL kept all my foreign/language friends who comment and interact with me.
6. The easy thing is to look for the empty picture avatars, 9 out of 10 times they arent people who are interesting or using their Facebook. Most signed up for a while and stopped. ALSO NO FACE PICS…if you have an avatar of something other than your face and you don’t appear in the photos you’ve posted, DENIED.
7. Business profiles all got dumped. Some were from prior to the creation of Fan pages so I had to dump them. A few chimed up and turns out their personal profile AND business profile where following me. I said “nope,” only one person per entry, no duplicates.
8. Same person, multiple accounts. I was amazed how some people have up to 5 personal accounts. Talk about a waste of my space.
9. You can search by a few different ways but I pretty much went by name and picture. Then I’d look at their wall. The next group I dumped were people who’s wall or postings didnt impress me. Obviously the hard core Facebook gamers with nothing but game posts went. Some people never talk just retweet links. BORING, get some original thoughts.
10. One thing I’ve found is if I leave my computer and Facebook on overnight all sorts of odd people will IM that I dont want to have following me. Usually if you reply they go quiet. Its very odd. I call it sticking your head up for an un-friending.
11. Hard core politicos who spout 100% their drivel about the “other” party. Any fanatic regardless of topic went out the window. I want friends who can talk or LISTEN about a multitude of subjects in life. I dont like fanatic robots.
12. Now every day or two I glance over my feed to vet whose chatting and if I really want them.
13. Newbies. I’ve noticed a few newbies sending requests. I send them the “goto my Fan Page link.” Let’s see if they stick with it first.
It sure has cleaned up the feed I get. Now when I get Friend Requests I look at them a whole lot more and qualify them. Fortunately most good people that like me from Twitter will type out an introduction. Thats a great way to get in. Dont be afraid to ask people why they want to friend you. Trust me its easier to do this ahead of time, than clean up the mess at 5000.
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
nice post Chris š And thanks for not deleting me š I look forwrd to your posts on Facebook š
Hi Chris, although I don’t have 5,000 friends yet, I agree with your practice and have started doing what you suggested this year. It’s not about how many you have. What’s the saying about quality versus quantity? I want quality friends on my wall. Thanks for the post. I enjoy your show! š
This is a very exact list and helpful. I recently did the same thing and also sorted people into groups to more effectively use that feature. Some people just don’t “get” that social media is the same as the offline cocktail party or networking event. No one likes spam, a pictureless profile, or mindless event invitations that don’t even apply.
Thanks Chris!
EXPECT Success!
Jackie Ulmer
It might have been a little longer but I process pretty fast. All you need
is a quick look.
Wow! Nice to know I’ve been doing some of the right things from the start. š Total stranger with no introduction? Rude. You’ll receive a, “Thank you for the friend request. Let’s connect on my fan page first.” kind of reply. Initially, it was due to privacy concerns. Now, it’s more of a courtesy thing for me.
Great article! Thanks!
Chris, I’m finding that negotiating Facebook is a lot more tiresome tha managing my twitter account. Thank you for these useful tips!
I know exactly what you mean, I went from 622 friends to 58
One of your best posts in a while Chris.
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Well buddy I am waaiting for You to follow me back hope I am worthy of it since We do hangout on twitter and Empire I hope You find it to follow me back and thanks for such a grreat post I just have redone my FB & twitter.
Well buddy I am waaiting for You to follow me back hope I am worthy of it since We do hangout on twitter and Empire I hope You find it to follow me back and thanks for such a grreat post I just have redone my FB & twitter.
Well buddy I am waaiting for You to follow me back hope I am worthy of it since We do hangout on twitter and Empire I hope You find it to follow me back and thanks for such a grreat post I just have redone my FB & twitter.
cool done.
Totally love your post. Ā After opening a small business I am very careful of who I approve on my personal FB list. Ā I’d prefer not to mesh business with my personal life. Ā Thanks for the idea of creating a message to send them directly to my fan page. Ā Looking forward to future post.
SassyShoeGal
Awesome post filled with great advice!
Interesting read.Ā I am careful who I accept, I like to see who our mutual friends are first if I don’t recognize the name or face.Ā No āmutual friendsā usually means I don’t accept.Ā There have been a few that I have been highly suspicious of, you know the “Hi, I am recently divorced and I love the look of your profile photo” type.Ā Block!!Ā I like to keep lists to organize and keep profile for friends and the more business / networking type to a page.
Another great post!Ā Going through that many friends to evaluate who’s communicated and who’s contributed sounds tedious. Ā Thanks for the pointers. š
I also nix trolls.