Sitting amidst clutter and mess, I looked for my phone that beeped incessantly buried under heaps of worn sarees, paper bags, old books and diaries. When I finally managed to locate it, I realised it to be a message from an acquaintance I had befriended during a conference.
She pinged me to wish me a Happy New Year and you won’t believe we ended up chatting for more than 20 minutes. It was after a year she had connected with me but, we still struck a chord and managed to start a conversation.
What were the next steps? Well, I went ahead and checked her social media profiles and scanned our mutual contacts and connections. This I had missed upon doing the last time.
Though social media might seem the easiest way of checking out other people’s lives, we forget to keep our social platforms updated.
I realised that the same might be the case with so many of my own long lost friends and contacts. Hence, I decided on a New Year resolution or maybe let us call it “every year- resolution.” Let’s use this time to de-clutter our own “social” facts. It will require the same grit and determination that goes into scrubbing your home from top to bottom. It is important because people can anytime check you out online, instead of dropping at your home.
So, navigate to a clear, organised social presence. Decluttering your personal and professional “social/ digital” personality is very important because if you publish something on the internet, it lives forever. However, you can delete anything you don’t want to draw attention to (if it has not been noticed already).
Dust your old unused visitng-card holders may be scrolling through them you might bump into the right resource for your upcoming project. Organise your followers, declutter unwanted weird invitations. Read unread mails and finish what was left in the middle some time or the other.
Cleaning and organising your Linkedin profile is like managing your office. Linkedin is like the mini office, it has your ebooks, niche forums, unread articles, influencers, clients, employees and even your old office colleagues.
- The key here is to “Stay Updated”. Choose to highlight the newly found talents or skills, milestones and even new ideas as Linkedin posts. Updating the profile summary is the first step in de-cluttering the social presence. You can also make it interesting by updating the profile photo with an attractive picture or professional headshot.
- Personalize your profile URL with your name.
- Remove people from your network who aren’t helpful or negative.
- Keep your network updated, you can also interesting people you met in your recent conferences, meetings or any other events in your network.
Facebook:
Many might have lost hope on this platform professionally but, it still has worth in Indian context.
- If your profile picture is years old, update your profile picture along with your cover photo with the way you want to portray yourself.
- Make sure the about section is filled out with things you want to know personally or professionally.
- Delete the posts which didn’t catch much attention or posts which highlighted any negative view.
- Filter your Friend lists. There are people whose posts you no longer want to see, click on unfollow button, simple. Follow the ones that are now more relevant.
- Privacy settings on facebook are there for a reason, group your family, friends, acquaintances and professional links on facebook separately and use those filters religiously while posting on your page
- If you are a page owner use this time to check insights and your page performance over the past year.
Twitter:
Twitter is now at its peak in terms of using it as a marketing tool.
- Again, the first step is to update your bio with personal or professional details you want to emphasize upon.
- You have to update your photo, in case it is outdated. Some people like to stay consistent with their profile pictures on each platform, well, to each his own.
- Check your followers list, if you, see any fraudulent, indecent or fake account, block those accounts.
- Use this festival time as an excuse to get in touch with people by wishing them and sending good wishes. We can always reconnect with people who bring the best in us.
Gmail:
This is like those old drawers filled with files.
- Start with clearing out spam and trash. we seriously never look into those.
- Organise, create folders, categorise into primary, social and promotional.
- If your inbox is full with unread e-mails, it is definitely time to unsubscribe or unfollow them.
- Check your drafts or outbox, you might see some incomplete e-mails you would like to finish and send or directly delete them.
- You can send creative digital invitations to call over people at your place to celebrate with a small party.
You can always use the social media platform to your convenience, hence never let go of the personal touch.
And last but not the least, remember to follow a disciplined routine from then on. You might deter once or twice, but then you can rectify and follow these same steps next year during festivals or new-years.
Before you post on social media, make sure you have made a commitment to post consistently, whether it’s once per day or twice per week. Otherwise, people might think that you do not exist anymore which leads to lack of interest on their part. When you are done with all above steps your profile is ready and can be easily called “Fantastico!”
This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.
No Comments, Be The First!