There are no hard and fast rules for social media regarding connection strategy. Everybody follows their own criteria, and many people make it up as they go. They tend to review invitations on a case-by-case basis.
Facebook is arguably the most socially oriented of the Big 3 social media platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.) As a result, some people like to restrict their friends list to those they know well. The problem with this strategy is that as more and more people join Facebook, it is common to receive invitations from co-workers, vendors, co-members of professional associations, and casual acquaintances. How can you ignore these invitations without "dissing" these people? You could send a polite message explaining that you use Facebook only for close friends and family, or you can set up groups that restrict access to particular information in your profile and on your wall.
For example, if you don't want your professional connections and casual acquaintances to see family photos, you may choose to block these peoples' access to them. It's actually easy to do through the following steps:
- Go to Friends
- Make a New List
- Name the Group
- Hit enter to save
- Now to add friends to that group
Now you need to set your albums' privacy settings for this group:
- Go to Photos
- Album Privacy
- Change who can see this for a group of photos to Only Friends
- Click Customize in the dropdown list
- Click except these people
- Type the name of the group (or individuals) you want to restrict access
- Click okay
Now remember to add all similar new friends to that group when you invite or accept them. The beauty of this strategy is that these people will never even know that these photo exist. They can't miss what they are unaware of, so there will be no hard feelings. If you want to check and see how they view your profile, follow these steps:
- Mouse over Settings and click Privacy
- Click Profile
- Type a friend's name in the box after "See how a friend sees your profile"
You will then see what your friend experiences when they view your profile. If they still have access to information that you want to restrict, you can further tweak your privacy settings by mousing over Settings and clicking Privacy, then adjust the settings as appropriate for you.
by: Christine Pilch
Christine@GrowMyCo.com
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