How Do You Know Who To Interact With On Social Media?

By Sharon Mostyn | Published: September 6, 2010
Knowing who to interact with is important
The inspiration – thanks Autom Tagsa!

A comment I made during last week’s #SMchat was one of the most re-Tweeted and commented upon Tweets I’ve posted recently. My Tweet (on the left) was to point out that you can spend a lot of time on social media without seeing any benefits. Just like in real life, if you’re interacting with the wrong people, you won’t get much out of the conversation.

There’s an article in the Guardian that says Twitter is changing how we interact with the world. The way I see it, social media isn’t changing the way we interact with the world, it’s giving us a new way to network with people that we may not have had access to without Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/etc.

Heidi Cool, a #SMchat regular, wrote a post in September 2009 asking, “How are you interacting with your target audience?”, and although it’s important to interact with your target audience, it’s also important to connect with people who aren’t your target audience right now, because they could be in the future.

My friend Renee Lemley from Gray Matter Marketing came up with some great names for Twitter follow strategies like: THE UNEQUIVOCALLY UNRECIPROCATED FOLLOW STRATEGY and THE EVEN-STEVEN FOLLOW STRATEGY in her post, “Why, How and Who Do You Follow?” Which social media interaction strategy is right for you? Or do you use a different technique?

The main question in this week’s #SMchat conversation is: How do you know who to interact with on Social Media?

My short answer: Everyone!

Want to find out the longer version? (We’re limited to 140 characters because it’s a Twitter chat, but I can guarantee there will be more than 9 characters of conversation going on!) Join us on Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 1PM ET on the hashtag #SMchat for answers to the question above and these questions as well:

Julian Loren wants to know, How do you gracefully disengage when needed? Hopefully, Sherry Lowry will join us to expand on her suggestion to “build in graceful exits to agreements.”

Jeunesse Yvonne wants to know if it’s appropriate to follow your boss/manager. A Mashable survey says it’s wrong to friend your boss on Facebook in their article, “Facebook Friends With Your Boss? Right or Wrong?” I’m not sure that I agree with that, but let’s hear what you have to say!

Jeunesse Yvonne also asks should you interact with people you’d like to be employed by? I think DJ Waldow would emphatically say that’s a good idea…emphatically mainly because DJ’s enthusiastic about everything, but also because social media helped him get his job at Blue Sky Factory!

Got questions on who to interact with on social media? Even better, bring an opinion or some real-life examples of your own to our Twitter chat on Wednesday, 9/8/10 at 1P ET – we look forward to chatting with you there! Can’t make it, or have a burning question that you don’t want to forget? Leave a comment below and I’ll make sure we discuss it during the chat. I’ll also post a link to the transcript for your review.

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  • Anonymous

    I love the answer “everyone!” in response to who to connect with on twitter : ) That is my favorite part… so many awesome people out there.

    • http://sharonmostyn.com Sharon Mostyn

      Thanks for the comment, Amber! I completely agree that there are so many awesome people out there – it’s easy to get carried away in adding people to connect with on Twitter and other social media channels.

      (P.S. For some reason my blog kept trying to make the “part… so” a link, so I added the space to your comment to eliminate the link attempt.)

  • http://twitter.com/autom8 Autom Tagsa

    thanks for the mention Sharon. #smchat is a lively bunch and each time i join in to share my 2 cents i am often surprised by how responsive people are. to the question on your post (with whom to interact) i would also add that while folks should interact with everybody, the onus really is on them to decide whom they wish to pursue further contact (ie., follow on twitter) based on the how meaningful and valuable they felt the interchange was and what they feel they could further learn from or share with others. cheers! autom

    • http://sharonmostyn.com Sharon Mostyn

      Good point, Autom! It truly is up to the individual to determine their own unique follow strategy.

  • http://www.heidicool.com/blog/ cool

    Sharon,
    I think you made a very valuable point about following more than your target audience to plan for the future. Obviously this wouldn’t take a shot-gun approach of following everyone, but I think we can each probably identify multiple target audiences that we may have today or in the future.

    My blog focused on my main business goal, but we each have multiple goals. One common to most is using social media to gain knowledge by connecting with peers and thought leaders in our industry. Another might be to make local connections for both business and personal reasons. We may also follow people with common interests such as photography, science and cooking. The intriguing that about that is that we never know when that photography blogger we follow will lead us to some other great connection more related to one of our other goals. So on Twitter at least I have a fairly broad following approach, I follow people that seem interesting for a variety of reasons and I interact with them via conversation as time/opportunity allows.

    I do also follow prospects and clients on Twitter, but I understand the hesitancy for people to follow the boss on Facebook. In that scenario I think it depends on who your boss is, how well you get along and how well that person understands social media. I don’t think we can make a definitive ruling on the subject but instead make decisions on a case-by-case basis.

    This should be a great chat discussion. It also reminds me how much I miss the former Twitter feature that let us see Tweets when our friends replied to people we aren’t following. I used to jump into a lot of conversations and meet new people when that feature was enabled. Now meeting friends of friends takes a bit more effort.

    I don’t know if I can make this week’s chat yet, but if not I look forward to the transcript.

    • http://sharonmostyn.com Sharon Mostyn

      Thanks for the insightful comments, Heidi! I tend to agree with following people who seem interesting for any number of reasons (not always work- or goal-related) but as Amber mentioned, there are so many interesting people – how do you decide which ones?!?! Thus, my “follow everyone” short answer.

      Regarding Facebook and the boss, I’ve always been of the mindset that you shouldn’t post anything that will upset your boss/teacher, spouse/parent/child, or minister/rabbi/clergy, so I wouldn’t have any problems with being friends with my boss on Facebook. Of course that assumes that we are also friends in real life…

  • http://www.heidicool.com/blog/ cool

    Sharon,
    Agreed, if you never post anything that you wouldn’t want your mother/grandmother etc. to see then you should be pretty safe. When I first joined Facebook I was working at Case Western Reserve Univ. That was back in the days when only people with .edu accounts could use the service. So most of the people I connected with were students, faculty and staff at Case and other universities. It was a different world back then, but when the boss finally joined I did follow her and didn’t think anything of it. Then again I wasn’t playing Farmville, etc. and didn’t spend much time on FB during the day, so it wasn’t much an issue.

  • http://www.heidicool.com/blog/ cool

    Sharon,
    Agreed, if you never post anything that you wouldn’t want your mother/grandmother etc. to see then you should be pretty safe. When I first joined Facebook I was working at Case Western Reserve Univ. That was back in the days when only people with .edu accounts could use the service. So most of the people I connected with were students, faculty and staff at Case and other universities. It was a different world back then, but when the boss finally joined I did follow her and didn’t think anything of it. Then again I wasn’t playing Farmville, etc. and didn’t spend much time on FB during the day, so it wasn’t much an issue.

  • Pingback: Tweets that mention Tomorrow on #SMchat we'll be discussing "How Do You Know Who To Interact With On Social Media?" Join us 9/8 1P ET! -- Topsy.com

  • http://sharonmostyn.com Sharon Mostyn

    Here’s the #SMchat transcript in case you missed the chat:
    http://bit.ly/cdHsa5

    I’m working on a follow-up post for @JoeHage and will post a link as soon as it has been posted!