Cutting Down On Random Facebook Friends

I know I’ve done similar posts before. But in this I’m including some tools for you. Please feel free to use.

I know for some facebook is the wild wild west full of people willing to take their chances to accept anyone that will ask to be their friend because they use it for “networking.”

Nothing wrong with that shot gun approach if you choose to use facebook in that way.

But I guess I’m more picky with my friends, and the time I spend weeding through stuff on facebook. I’m starting to eliminate people who just don’t fit with my values, and who are complete strangers to me. After all 200-300 quality friends on facebook are much more important than 700-1200 people who are meaningless.

Questions I have to ask myself. Am I really interacting with all of them? Is it the best use of my time?

Here are a few great questions to ask yourself about your facebook presence:

1. Am I here to meet people for business networking? If the answer is yes then you may want to define what exactly that entails. People in your field and related fields, people who can be potential clients, and people who can give you referrals. But how do you know that people who are requesting your friendship fall into any of these categories? Perhaps they are just requesting your friendship to push out their message. They don’t really care about who you are and what you do…because you could be one of those people who can give them referrals.
2. Am I here to socialize with old friends and family? Well if the answer to this one is yes, you must ask yourself do you want your business associates to see what kinds of things you’d be sharing with friends and family? That information could be of a much more private nature and not something for public or business consumption. If that’s the case you will be constantly monitoring your image if you have business friends and networking opportunities on your account yet you are using it freely to talk with friend and family about deeper more personal information.
3. Am I here to play games? If facebook is an outlet for you to veg out and take breaks from other things in the form of games you’ll probably only want to find others who are interested in gaming. That or at least ask them when you friend them if they are interested in gaming and if they say no, do not send those people endless gaming requests…just common sense there I think.

Okay so now you’ve decided how you want to use facebook, and you get a random friend request. If you’ve decided you’ll accept every friend request under the sun so you look influential and have a huge base to push out your message to, then fine your all set. Hit accept.

But if you are like me and fed up with the treadmill of random people you care nothing about and who have no interest in you as a person, here’s a form email you can feel free to copy and send to anyone that requests your friendship who you don’t know.

Dear (insert name here)

I don’t think we know each other and I’m trying to cut down on accepting random friend requests. Please let me know why you are requesting my friendship.

Have we met at a networking event? If so I apologize for not remembering. Do we have something in common that you’d like to talk about? Are you interested in some of the organizations I’m involved in? I’d love to know more about you.

Thank you so much for understanding.

I highly recommend when you request someone’s friendship and you think that they might not know you, to take a moment to put a little bit of an introduction into that friend request. After all you wouldn’t walk up to a stranger on the street and say hey, you want to be my friend? : )

Just a suggestion.

Thank you and I look forward to hearing back from you.

Sincerely,
Your name here

I think this is a good way to test the water with people. if they reply, then great they are actually putting some thought into why they are requesting your friendship, and if they don’t, is that someone you really want on your list anyway?

Just some ways to cut down on Random Facebook Friend requests, if that is something that is starting to become an issue for you.