Do You Manage Your Social Media Presence?

At age 56, you might not expect the NorthStarNerd to be a leader in terms of social media. Obviously, I am too old! However, if my younger peers make that assumption, you would be wildly mistaken.

I just received an email stating that my LinkedIn profile was one of the top 5% most viewed profiles in 2012. This is an amazing stat. You might be curious where I hang out online. What is generating all these views?

• First, while I do have a Facebook account, it is very private ... friends and family only. My security / privacy settings are very locked down. I rarely "like" Facebook services because I am not willimg to give my private information to these organizations. Thus Facebook is not generating many views of my LinkedIn profile.
• While I have a Twitter account, I am not real active. Twitter is mainly a one way conversation which I don't find real useful from a collaboration vantage point. Once again, I doubt Twitter is generating many views.
• Most people do not blog anymore. This fact is a shame. My blog is a personal R&D site for both me and experiments I run for my Fortune 100 employer. My blog now has over 500,000+ views. Given I display the link to my LinkedIn profile near the top of my blog, I suspect my blog does quite well in terms of views. Please understand, I've built of the following to this blog slowly over many years. No pain, no gain.
• Private Yammer networks outside of my company's own microblog are a favorite for me. Did I mention I like two way conversation and collaboration?!
• Finally, I am a huge, but selective user of LinkedIn. The demographics and connections which may be found and utilized are downright amazing.

Thus, do you manage your social media reputation, or does it manage you?

Comments

[Tyler]

Regarding Twitter, I think it's similar to your blog - it's something you have to cultivate and constantly adjust over time. The two best rules I've heard for Twitter are:

1. Add and remove people at the drop of a hat. If there's one day where someone you follow is wasting your time, don't be afraid to drop them, because there's someone else out there posting similar relevant content more judiciously.
2. Use search, save searches (using #'s), and be a power list user (including both @ and # in lists).

Unfortunately, I don't follow my own rules. Go figure.