Time to Clean Up your Social Media?
Often, a day like a Friday is a good time to spend a little
time and clean up your social media. Why clean up? Think about all the time you
spend sorting through the clutter of information online to read the information
from people you love reading? Think of all the times you think, ugh, I don't want
to read that right now. Well, today is a great day to spend a little time, do a gut check, and ask
yourself, do I want to follow/read/track this person or feed? It's okay to be
cruel. After all, if you don't do a little clean up from time to time, the
person you are being most mean to is yourself.
Here are some ideas to get you started...
- Un-follow people on Twitter. I bet you can read
down through your twitter list of people you follow and instantly know who you
should un-follow. It's okay if it's me, I won't take it personal. You'd be surprised how freeing it is to un-follow people who clutter your twitter feed with nonsense. It feels so good to un-follow and then instantly see the information you're always scanning to find.
- Hide people or applications in your Facebook news feed. You don't have to un-friend them. Just hover over their
update in your news feed, find the Hide button, and click on it. You can also
hide everyone's Farmville, Mafia Wars, or other application updates from
hogging all that news update space. It's okay to connect with friends you made in fifth grade summer camp, but their fifty random updates a day do nothing but keep you from reading the really relevant, important updates.
- Un-subscribe from RSS/Atom feeds in Google
Reader (or other similar aggregator). If you're constantly marking a feed or folder as
"Mark all as read" chances are you really don't care about the content. Do
yourself a favor and un-subscribe so you can make room for new feeds when you
discover them. I can personally recommend this one. I did it today and it felt awesome to eliminate what I thought mattered but I wasn't actually reading.
- And, go clean/organize your email inbox. Okay,
this one has nothing to do with social media but don't you just feel so good
when you leave for the weekend and everything is clean and in order - emails deleted, emails responded, emails filed away. <<<Insert happy sigh here>>> Or... maybe
that's just me.
Either way, look at your favorite social media websites and
see how you can dust the cobwebs, clean out the clutter, and make your efforts
more efficient. It's a great task for a Friday when your mind is already on
your weekend activities.