Personal Branding: My Social Network
It happened last week…I was on Facebook doing the usual…optimizing CSS code on FBML tabs , updating client profiles, analyzing business page insights, you know stuff normal 24 year olds (at least the ones I know) don’t do, when the thought came to me to analyze my own personal page, which I haven’t done in a month.
As an individual committed to personal branding, how smart am I for neglecting to do for myself what I’ve been drilling others to do for their brands. ( I don’t really want the answer.)
Looking through my updates for the last couple of weeks I noticed a steady decline in my likes.
Was I posting bad updates? Was I updating at the wrong times? I couldn’t figure it out at first then it hit me…. I looked back at my work schedule and everything now made sense. Facebook networking stopped being planned last month, new projects had taken my usual networking hour.
Digging even deeper, I thought about how many of my friends I engage with on a weekly basis, and that number was a small wake up call. Initially what started out as 20-25 people a week , dropped down to maybe 3.
Was it a coincidence engagement dropped on my profile 2 weeks following a tight schedule change? I didn’t think so.
These are my guesses for what’s actually going on now since I’ve neglected my network
1. I am being hidden from multiple friends news streams.
2. I’m being tuned out, not being seen as a person of interest.
3. I’ve ignored people, and now some of them just don’t like me.
The worst part is, I believe I’ve turned some friends into enemies. I send out an email blast to one of my lists whenever i’ve got something good to promote, “surprisingly” last week I had a low response rate, not to mention 10 people who used to love my promos opted out the list, and more then a few even called it spam (ouch!)
This recent turn out didn’t turn me red (which would be hard for someone like me on any day). It was an eye opening experience that I’m learning from. I’ve tested out the neglect capacity for my network and now I know.
Summarized Article: Add value to your network and do it consistently.
How much time do you spend networking on Facebook a day?
