Unfriend, Write, or Die | Peter Shankman

PETER SHANKMAN

POSTED ON January 17th, 2011

47 COMMENTS

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Unfriend, Write, or Die

Today’s communications exercise is a simple one:

When you’re done reading this blog, I’d like you to do the following:

Log into Facebook.

On the lefthand navigation pane, click on “Friends.”

Scroll through your friends list, and find six people with whom you haven’t spoken in at least six months.

Make a choice: Unfriend them, or write on their wall.

If you choose to unfriend them, know you’re doing so because if they’re in your network, you should be talking to them on a regular basis, fostering communication. It’s the original “networking.” It’s not about going to a networking party or the like. You should be cultivating everyone in your network at the least, several times a year. And remember – It’s not about you. You’re doing it to ask them what’s up, how they’re doing, what they’re working on with which you may be able to help.

If you choose to unfriend them, that’s fine, but know why you’re doing it.

On the other hand, if you choose to write on their wall, you’re stopping the cycle of ignoring. You’re ending the pattern of network-abuse, where you add people to your network with reckless abandon, and have no plans to follow through. You’re confronting the question of “Why is this person even in my network in the first place?” with a logical answer. You’re reaching out. That’s pure networking. That’s what leads to stronger bonds, tighter friendships, and yes, multi-million dollar contracts.

I say this in all my speeches to drive the above point home – in 2010, I can directly point to north of $200,000 in consulting work I received – not from people in my network, but from people in my network’s network – I.e., my friend’s friends asked them if they knew someone in the social media space, and I was top of mind to my friend – because I’d taken the time, on Facebook, to reach out.

You’re on Facebook, so this morning I ask you to make a choice. Unfriend, or reach out. Either answer will be the right one, but chances are, one will be much more rewarding over the long term than the other.

It’s your call.

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http://www.want2growmktg.com Jennifer Gerlock

What a great post and a terrific reminder. I have such a large group of “friends” and I don’t tend to them as often as I should, that is for sure.

This really got me: “You’re stopping the cycle of ignoring. You’re ending the pattern of network-abuse, where you add people to your network with reckless abandon, and have no plans to follow through. You’re confronting the question of “Why is this person even in my network in the first place?”

Thanks for the reminder Peter. What is the sense of gathering “friends” if you don’t engage with them?
http://thefutureisred.com Leigh

I go back and forth on this a lot.

I have a huge list of people on FB with whom I don’t interact regularly. We’re in the same travel circles and most of the time I am left wondering why the hell do I have this person on my list. Thus I’m poised to start defriending.

Then, every so often, one of those people will reach out. Or I’ll see a post from someone in my stream that leads me to say something, and a real connection is born. That’s the only thing that keeps me from defriending the people I don’t know.

So perhaps today is my day to say hello to six people I don’t know.
http://thefashionabletraveler.blogspot.com Catherine

Wow! How simple but such great advice. Heading to Facebook now.
Bea

The only thing I need to “cultivate” on Facebook is more funny pictures from high school and keeping in touch with my good friends who live too far away. Although somehow my strategy of using FB for purely fun has not gone according to plan, I’ve gotten at least 2 clients from it, and some other guy from HS and I keep talking business. Despite the fact that my profile picture is from 1989.
http://Www.Nicolenascenzi.com Nicole Nascenzi

A good reminder thanks for the “assignment” Peter
http://www.healinglabyrinthpath.com Hali Chambers

One of my FB friends must’ve read this post before me and unfriended me. Um, but I have no idea who it was. Ha! :-) H.
Sue Anne Reed

It either says that I spend way too much time on Facebook or that I’m very selective about who I add to my friends list (even though I’m at 500+), there are very few people that I can find that I haven’t interacted with in the past 6 months. And, most of them are people that don’t spend much time on Facebook.
KEK

Half the people I do not communicate with are not people *I* chose to friend – I went to a huge HS and get many requests from that crowd. I figure if someone wants to add me to their list even if I cannot remember them for the life of me, it really does not hurt. Makes them happy, I just block their inane weather/children/TGIF reports from my feed.

FB can give you the sense that you’re really in touch with people when you’re no more in touch than you were 10 years ago and FB didn’t exist. So I’ll take the advice for people who I really DO consider friends but haven’t connected with.
http://www.solvemedia.com Keri Albers

Peter- I love this article. I cannot tell you how many people I have reconnected with over the years that I most definitely would not have any other way…which has lead to shared words of encouragement, shared advice and shared smiles.

On a business level- this is the reason I first opened a FB account and have bonded with hundreds of people/clients/co-workers by proactively making that happen in a non-invasive way. In fact, I met my new boss through FB years back- finally met in person (not ever thinking I would potentially work for this person, but always respected what he was doing) at a professional networking event. Two weeks later I was signing a job offer. The power of networking and being proactive about it….endless.
http://www.pcgfabrics.comandwww.pillowcasegram.com Lesley Rackowski

I don’t agree with you on this one, Peter. (Please don’t unfriend me for saying that.) I don’t have a ton of FB friends, because I am very careful who I accept to be a friend; however, most of them I have not written to directly nor have they to me since we’ve become FB friends. But I do post something about my business every day, and one day that friend that I might have decided to unfriend since we haven’t directly communicated with each other in a year, may see something she or he wants and they will order it. Such as yesterday. I posted something, and I got an order for it, from someone who has never communicated directly to me. They went directly to my web site and ordered it within minutes. So in a way, I am interacting with them by posting something on my wall every day, and not just occasionally, like I’ve seen some businesses do. I have friends in business who wonder why their FB pages don’t bring them business, and I’ll ask them how often they post, and they’ll tell me answer like “Once a month,” “Every six months,” “Not much,” etc. So I think the secret is not to ignore your own FB page.
http://www.fingerlakeswriter.com Sue Henninger

Great post-I totally agree! As I expand my social network, one of the things that I constantly have to remind myself of is that, just because I can’t see the people I’m communicating with, I still need to put the same level of time and energy into these relationships as I do my “real” ones or they’ll become meaningless.

If I can’t make the time to listen to, exchange information with, or connect my new contact with others who could offer them their knowledge or expertise then we don’t really have a relationship and can’t really consider ourselves working or personal “friends”. And if that’s the case, as you say, why bother?
http://www.directmarketingrx.com Elizabeth

I’ve been doing this gradually. In the beginning it seemed like a contest who could have the most friends. I remember back in 2009 some guy skyped me encouraging me to build my circle of friends to 5000 or something over 1000 I don’t remember. I thought that was crazy.

One day a few weeks ago I went through and unfriended lots of people. I went from close to 600 friends down to 290. I need to go through and unfriend even more. I got tired that day so I didn’t finish it. Some “friends” I had no clue who they were or how we me or whatever so they were the first to get removed from my friend list.
Kristine Parkes

While I use my FB purely for personnel connections, I agree with you. I have friends from HS who friended me probably to add to their count but have not communicated with me since the initial friend request. Hum … time to unfriend? Others I don’t communicate with regularly but we both know that we are just a click away and use that click every now and again.

Never understood how anyone can manage to really connect with 500, 1,000, or more ‘friends’ on FB while actually getting anything done during the day.
http://kamanislands.wordpress.com Kaman

Done and done. Commented on all six people. May do more. All relationships, friendships and acquaintances included, need regular maintenance! I knew this…
Samantha

You wrote about this a while back, and since the first time. I do this.
Its a good way to ween out who is using crackbook as a passive way to stay in touch, rather than actually staying in touch the proper way. CONTACT.
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http://rebeccahappy.com rebeccahappy

There was a time when I knew the story of everyone I had on FB..I am still pretty good at knowing how I met someone but there are some that I have no idea and I know that we do not interact. I have been slowly cleaning up my list in the past couple of months and am still doing so.
A funny thing happened in December when I met someone face to face and I had to tell him I deleted him and ask if he wanted to reconnect via FB now that we had a face to face experience and conversation.
I refer ppl all the time to my list because I know who they are and how they fit together. It is just the push to numbers that sometimes gets me off track.Great reminder
http://flatratebiz.com Chris Johnson

Good article.

It goes farther: every quarter I do this. I personally call all of the friends on my FB. Then they o into a system where I’m to call them every 3 months. I do, generally. If I can’t find a number, I can’t make a relationship.

So I move on.

I do the same with Twitter, but I’m more permissive: I am looking for 50 acolytes, 12 disciples, and 2,000 fans. I won’t stop till I’m there.
http://www.facebook.com/mjjewell Mark Jewell

Done and done, Peter. Good recommendation. We’re discussing this later on this week in a group call focused on growing our network. Awesome stuff – thanks for the content!
Bill Salvin

If I comment here and the people I reconnected with see it, does that diminish the effort? Yes or no, it is a worthwhile thing to do. I’m not sure it matters where the idea comes from, it’s the effort to execute on the idea that will carry the day. Thanks, Peter.
http://www.obsessedwithconformity.com Jim Mitchem

Brilliant. I did this recently, but rather than reach out – I unfriended. It wasn’t an easy decision, even though it was easy to execute. And I only have like 300 people there. Early on in 2008, (before I was on Twitter) I was going into groups finding people to friend there. It freaked some people out, as I received many ‘Do I know you?’ responses. I wanted FB to be Twitter. Anyway, I keep my FB clan closer than any of the other platforms, since I tend to share my family there. I think I did the right thing in purging recently, but it still felt weird. Even though I didn’t really know or talk to those people.
http://traveholic.wordpress.com Charu

nice one! I have often thought of letting go of people in my network that I do not know personally – then I think ‘ what is the point of networking then’? also, I like it that a diverse group of people stay on my peripheral vision – I think I can always reach out to them when I need to – (just by them merit of the being in my network)
http://jfieldsmarketing.com Janelle Fields

I work with a lot a new business owners, and though people may find this hard to believe, a lot of them are baffled by the workings of Facebook and unsure about how to incorporate FB activity into their marketing strategy. This post gives simple, universally applicable advice for using Facebook but is especially helpful for time crunched entrepreneurs who need context and practical tips. Thanks.
http://Www.Solutionz.com Chicke Fitzgerald

Facebook gives us a powerful way to sort out our connections through the use if lists. For people that I do not know firsthand that friend me, I put them in “friends of friends”, but I have a special category for “friends of Bob Burg”, who is one of those people that in real life that I would say, “any friend of yours is a friend of mine”.

I will start today Peter to prioritize my interactions and take the step toward having a meaningful network, to them and to me.

This is not a numbers game or even one of popularity.

Life matters. Use Facebook wisely.
http://www.therextras.com Barbara Boucher, PhD

I’m already ahead of the game – not on fb. I hold tight to keeping my follower and following lists on twitter to people related to my online life – connecting, serving, resourcing parents of children with disabilities.

My blog is open to read, doesn’t require a registration to comment and offers RSS as an option.
http://www.onepennymillionaire.com Tom Wright

So Peter, you like continual contact? I’d like to put our thoughts together about this publicity/marketing approach, in particular when it comes to selling books. I assume that someday you will have a book out? Maybe you already do? It’s involved, starting the push to popularity. Social Media is just one aspect. I have tons of ideas and work on them every day. I’ve done tons of research as well, on publicity, and marketing books. It’s a career, no doubt. But when you have something of worth to say, what else can you do? So, I do it! I’d like to send you the book I’m talking about if it’s alright with you. A PDF copy. Let me know. Thanks, Peter!

Love and Light, Tom.
http://www.ghidinelli.com Brian

What if you use Facebook as a marketing platform? If your goal is to spread the word as wide as possible, of course it helps to build the tightest relationship possible with the “friend”, but in the same way you wouldn’t individually email all 50,000 people in your RSS feed, I don’t think every situation is quite this dire.

If your FB account is primarily social in nature, I think this is great advice. I use lists like Bob above suggests and my default is to keep posts and content to a tighter circle of people.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1415805151 Andrew Ewert

Peter:

Your post is thought provoking.

As in the physical world, not all human connections are created equal. There are best friends, good friends, friends, and acquaintances. So it is in the cyber world.

I keep my Facebook friends to a maximum of 30. There are different degrees of connection in my accumulation. I know all these people on a face-to-face basis from some point in the past. Some I haven’t seen in years. Many have very little in common with me – other than past experiences – and vice versa. I find that gratifying.

For the most part, they are my Facebook friends because they asked. I don’t have friends for the sake of networking or other forms of personal gain. Unfriending them without a valid reason would be unkind and contrary to the purpose of Facebook. It would be akin to ignoring an acquaintance I’ve known for years but, mutually, never advanced to a true friendship. Acquaintance gives us pleasure.

I can’t see posting a message on someone’s site just for the sake of posting. When I have something to communicate, I’ll do so. If they lay idle in the friends box for years, no harm done. Their presence is a snapshot of my past and a reminder of connection. Hopefully, some day we’ll have reason to fire-up that connection.

Andrew Ewert
http://www.commissionexpress.com/WA Michael G

I have mixed feelings about this one. I use facebook for my friends, family, and acquaintances and use LinkedIn for my professional relationship – there is some crossover but not as much as one might think. The FB connections are sometimes people I won’t see for years – not because I don’t care about them but because there is a distance between us of some sort. But the strength of our friendships are not in question. On LinkedIn, I sometimes use the network of your network capabilities to enhance business. On Facebook, I might write something about my political views or religion – on LinkedIn, that will never happen. Like most forms of communication, I think there are specific roles – in my view, Facebook is best used in a personal, not professional role, because of the open communication style variety of personal sharing that is engaged there.
http://Pointoforder@squarespace.com Kamran

Man, that was a hard exercise! Yep, that’s exactly the kinda frog I wanna eat everyday. Thanks for the nudge,I shall do it every day, moving forward. What’s the point of having ‘ friends’-digital &irl- if you are not engaging them?
Anthony S

I really like this blog post.

Networking is all about keeping a consistent line of communication with the people you are trying to network with. It seems like a simple concept, but sometimes a person may reach out to someone, and then ignore them for a period of time.

To advance in your career, ability to connect with people over a long period of time is crucial.
sv

Andrew Ewert – I agree 100%, couldn’t have said it better myself.
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http://www.happydental.ro Sean

Having listened to you, reading your HARO emails every day I have been influenced by your advice and I will be honest it has helped.

What you are saying about Facebook is very true and it is something I will do as soon as I finish this message.

Your thoughts are appreciated by me in Romania
http://www.HealthyBoomerBody.com Kathi Casey

Thanks for the reminder Peter. I’m also one who sometimes forgets and I have so many great friends on Facebook and Twitter. I’m going to take your advice this week and reach out!
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http://blog.mambomedia.com/ Mary Rarick

Love it, did it. I’ve set this as a recurring task and am doing it again next week. Thanks, Peter.
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http://laststopt1.com Fred

So I deleted some people I hadn’t talked to in a while but they ended up adding me again.
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Kaos

Great idea, and I have an even better one: leave facebook -I closed my facebook account several years ago, and guess what… ?
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