Come On - Brad Pitt? Don't waste my time.
Many businesses using Facebook started with a friend page, maxed out their 5,000 friend limit and then migrated over to a fan page which accepts unlimited fans – now called “likes”. In fact, at the beginning (not all that long ago), you couldn’t have a fan page without first opening a friend page, but thankfully that has changed.
Each FB Friend “Confirm” has Value.
As you probably already know, your customer and prospect lists are among the greatest assets a business owns. It’s all about lists. Lists of qualified people to sell to and upsell to. If you have a list of FB friends that don’t respond, don’t interact and/or are generally uninterested in what you have to say or offer, it’s a worthless list. On the other hand, having 5,000 targeted friends on a FB friend page can be extremely valuable for professional networking and sales conversion – but ONLY if they’re the right people. A fan page, if titled correctly (unless you’re an instantly recognizable brand like Starbucks or the Nike swosh) will naturally attract people who are interested in your product or service and because there is no limit, it’s unnecessary to filter who joins or “likes” the page.
Suddenly, Everyone Wants to be Your Friend
So, if you’re a small business like me and set up your friend page first before you figured out the fan page – and have been working your friend page list – you’ve noticed that when you hit around 1,500 friends suddenly people come out of the woodwork requesting to be your friend. I think it’s because FB starts seeing you as an active user and begins suggesting you to others more often – which then starts the process of having to manage your requests.
If you’re sitting on a friend list of 2,000 or more and want to maximize the opportunity of the list to its fullest, here are some tips I use to manage my FB Friend page. This isn’t foolproof, but it will help weed out some of your unwanted friend requests.
How Many Friend Requests Do You Have?
Set the Boundaries
Step ONE: Clearly identify the goal for your FB Friend list. Is it to build relationship, to introduce yourself and your product/service to the market, to build an opt-in list off of the FB Friend list that you can eventually sell to, to share information with, to extract information from, or simply to create your personal brand? Decide, so that you can focus your actions.
Step TWO: Visually profile your IDEAL customer. In my case, I’m looking for people who are serious about their business and although I know that business people come in all shapes and sizes – particularly on Facebook – I have a clear picture of what mine look like – and so should you.
Be Descriminating
Here’s my criteria to deny a friend request:
- No Photo – I want to know who I’m letting into my circle.
- Pet, Child or Inanimate Object Photo of some kind – again, I want to see who it is that I’m letting in and I want them to be seriously into business, not using FB to share cat or children stories. But some FB users WANT animal and children people. I know, what you may be thinking. FB users are more casual than LinkedIn connections, so I may be overlooking a good business contact because they’re showing their casual side. That may be so, but time does not allow me to go through every person’s site to determine their eligibility. At this writing I have 936 friend requests (and growing) waiting for my reply and only 700 friend slots left. WOW – that can be really timely.
- Women Collectors – yes, it’s true. There’s a whole lot of men on the internet that are collecting women and they’re quite easy to pick out. In the Friend Requests list, I click on our mutual friends – if all of our mutual friends are women I immediately ignore their request. If they have one or two male mutual friends I’ll take a look at their site to see if maybe they have a product or service that relates to women. If I get there and see that a) they don’t have a business b) there’s a bunch of nonsense on their wall or c) when looking at who all their friends are, they are indeed collecting women. I ignore their request. I will also block women collectors (they come back like a bad cold) or I mark them as not knowing them.
- People Who Try to Sell me in their Request – unless I’m interested in what they’re selling. This is a red flag that you’ll be bombarded with emails to buy their products.
- Religious or Political Extremists – these people tend to write very polarizing posts on my wall. I don’t have time to be removing these posts and it’s not worth alienating others. Just not my target.
- Weird Name/Photos – anything that is strange.
Establish Ground Rules
Here are my ground rules for friend removal (again, because I’m looking for business people) …
- Application invitations from
- Mafia Wars
- FarmVille
- CountryLife
- Any new game requests that show up.
- Most hugs, kisses, mushy stuff like that.
- Anyone who sends me any kind of inappropriate emails.
- People who annoy me by sending me selling, selling, selling, selling emails.
- People who poke me is always a heads up to check out their site and see if they really are involved in a serious business.
- Any behaviour that is unprofessional.
- Friends that immediately post their sales links on my wall without permission after being confirmed or without a connection to the conversation or the general feel of my page. Friends that engage in conversations by commenting on posts on my Wall and build relationship are always welcome to post links on my Wall.
Save Your Time
Years ago I learned from my Time Text Priority Management Training to only touch a piece of paper on my desk once. Look at it, decide what to do with it and do it. It’s the same with FB friend requests. Make the decision to confirm or ignore and then move on.
I hope this helps! I’d love to hear any tips you have.
Charlene Brisson, 3-Step Marketing Pro
3-Step Marketing Pro Website