10 Ways to NOT Be My Facebook Friend

How did Facebook ever get to be so big?

Honestly, the site is chock full \’o so much garbage that it has become the new MySpace.

But beyond all the stupid vampire and zombie games, there is a solid social media site that can be useful for businesses.

For over a year, I have peaked at my 5000 friend limit.

However, people close their accounts or unfriend me from time to time. So I\’ve always got just a few slots open.

Now as of this writing, I\’ve got over 4600 people in my friend queue. They are waiting to be accepted or ignored as friends.

Obviously, with Facebook\’s 5000 friend hard limit, there is no way I can approve everyone. So I have to be selective.

But there\’s just no way to friend everyone, even if I wanted to.

So how exactly do I select which requests to accept?

To begin with, I\’m going to show you what NOT to do. I hope you find it instructive for more than how to friend me, but also as a primer for properly using social media.

Here are ten ways to NOT have me accept your Facebook friend request.

1) The empy profile picture. What are you, the invisible man? Having a photo of yourself is one of the absolute basics of social media. If you don\’t make an effort to show me who you are, I\’m not letting you in.

2) The Spamvertiser. I\’m not sure what this clever individual was attempting to sell me and I don\’t care. Ignore.

3) The mutual friend pitch. I don\’t care if you know what my whole family has for breakfast. If you use this impersonal approach obviously generated by a silly Facebook app, we just aren\’t going to hit it off.

4) The walking, talking ad profile. Apparently this person is an ATM. I\’m already friends with an ATM and it charges me fees every time I want to have a conversation. Not gonna happen.

5) The \”You\’ve got the wrong guy\” invitation. Man that cruise WAS something awesome. Remember the ports… the weather… the food. Uh, no I don\’t. Because I wasn\’t on a cruise with you.

6) The Dustin Hoffman profile. Unless you are Dustin Hoffman, and clearly you aren\’t, don\’t use his profile pic. Be yourself, please. If I wanted to connect with Dustin Hoffman I\’d watch Tootsie… again.

7) The Put a Shirt on It profile pic. Dude. Seriously. Do you really think I want to see the gun show? Three words. K-Mart. $11.99. Cotton.

8) The Scary Dude profile pic. This guy\’s picture is mild compared to some of the ones I see. If I friend them I\’m afraid they are going to want to beat me up. Try smiling. It changes everything.

9) The \”death becomes her\” profile pic. Someone call the morgue. I think they missed this one.

10) The \”Ok, but who ARE you?\” profile pic. This type accounts for the majority of invites I receive. I see a person\’s name and their photo. That\’s it. Unless I already know you, I don\’t have any reason to accept your invite. I don\’t know you. I don\’t know why you want to friend me. I\’m totally in the dark. I won\’t IGNORE you, but I won\’t ACCEPT you either. You will sit in the queue until Facebook raises their friend limit. And that\’s not going to happen until the global warming nuts admit they were wrong all along.

So how DO you friend me on Facebook?

Assuming you haven\’t broken any of the cardinal rules stated above, how about just being yourself?

Since I have already accepted friend requests from those who did it right, I didn\’t have a live example to show you.

I asked Dan Nickerson, my VP of Ideas, to create a fake profile and request to demonstrate.

Let me be clear. You don\’t become my friend on Facebook by kissing up to me. This was just an example of one way to get my attention.

Social media is all about how we engage others.

If we are sloppy about it or seem that we don\’t really care, it\’s foolish to expect anything in return.

But if we establish a point of connection and appear interested we are more likely to receive reciprocation.

An invite to me may not have anything to do with my work. It may be to comment on another type of connection such as a place I have lived or visited. Someone may connect with me due to a hobby I have. It could be any number of the reasons.

The point is that the person requesting the friend connection is attempting to connect with me in a meaningful way.

When I initially used Facebook I accepted every friend request that came my way. If I could turn back the clock I would have been more selective. That\’s one reason I purged my Twitter follows a few months back.

Remember that social media needs to conform to your usage and not the other way around. Use it the way you want to and you\’ll not only receive the greatest benefit, but you\’ll also provide the greatest value.

What are your thoughts? Please leave your comments below!