When Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the surface of the moon he said “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” That may be a bit over the top for a step I made this weekend, but it was a giant leap for my social media presence. I am now in full compliance with Facebook’s terms of service. Let me explain.
My Facebook Timeline They Don’t Show
I joined Facebook a long time ago — the timeline says 2007. When I signed up, it was to stay in touch with close personal friends and to reconnect with friends I lost touch with. The quantity of people wasn’t as important as the quality. But over time, Facebook was growing so fast, that I was trying to put people on lists, etc. to have it organized.
Then around the same time, two very different things happened — they created a perfect storm for someone who was trying to have a private page on Facebook.
- Farmers signed up to Facebook in mass! What an awesome thing that was! I was getting friend requests from farmers like Steve & Melinda Chapman of Lorenzo, Texas who had hosted me on their farm dozens of times. And lots of other farmers and people in agriculture wanted to connect as well. There was so much to be learned
- Facebook made it really hard to use lists. Yeah, they change stuff all the time and its usually not for the better.
Yes, I Broke the Rules
I wanted to go “all in” friending and accepting friend requests but also wanted to respect my family’s privacy. So that awesome thing of farmers flocking to social media posed a problem for me. While it was against the terms of service, I did what several others have done — I created a second Facebook profile. One weekend I sat there, creating that new profile and friending all the agriculture folks. It was a weird split, much like I once had with my blogs. But it was something that I felt was needed as I tried to carve out some sense of personal and professional realms. But the really tough part is lots of farmers are my close personal friends. And that’s grown significantly in the last couple of years. And with that came questions about where I post what.
For instance…. My recent trip to the Farm Bureau in Hawaii. How do I share photos from that trip? I know a good number of my friends would like to see the landscapes and the stories involve the folks I’m traveling with…. so…. do I post them in two places? Instead, I posted very few photos on Facebook and a few here about specific parts of my trip (more to come some even this week!)
Finding a New Way to Facebook
Since Facebook made some changes six months ago making lists easier to use, I’ve been considering consolidating the two pages. The fact that they also allow people to subscribe to my public feed, helped too but it was the ability to shift my one profile to a blog page so I didn’t lose connectivity with all those ag friends that really made the difference. And slowly I am trying to add lots of them to my other profile and approving friend requests several times a day.
I have to say, I did the full back up but I wish I’d done a few other things as I consolidated two profile pages to one.
- Ripping the band-aid off finally was relieving as I expected, but despite doing a good bit of searching, not all of it was laid out so I was prepared on the major stuff but am finding minor complications.
- I realize now I could have done better at migrating friends over.
- Should have let my farm friends know I was going to make the move before doing it. Not sure how many of them are seeing the updates but they are getting there slowly.
- Hopefully this blog post will result in my friends finding me. They can probably put in Janice and find the blog page (hope they don’t unlike it.)
- Could have carefully worked through friending people ahead since I could have simply connected the two and friended everyone on the one going away over time.
- I should have simply stop interracting on the profile to go away other than directing people to the other profile.
- Should have captured the things I wanted to somehow carry forward…. like the event I had planned on that page…. uh, it disappeared along with the profile.
Anyway, I’m sure like all big changes, this will all settle out soon enough and I am looking forward to only managing one profile for myself. The new challenge of figuring out how best to encourage the blog page and how to get more folks to like it…. that’s a challenge I’ll take on after I get this whole thing sorted out with friends. Maybe I can work on it during the Super Bowl tonight. 😉
My Take on The Super Bowl
By the way, on that note, I am pulling for the Giants. Not a HUGE Giants fan but I was lucky enough to call them my home team for four years. And as a member of a Carolina Panthers family, I’m pretty sure there would be long-term consequences if I even tried to cheer for the Patriots. (My sister has a particularly vivid grudge.) Since I’m a casual puller for the Giants, I’m guessing I’ll be more excited to see how the final cuts of the Matthew Broderick Honda commercials and other ads turn out. I’m a major fan of Ferris Bueller so he’s plenty of reason to watch the game.
I’ll also take a look or two at social media where there will definitely be representation between both teams’ fans. But the real score for me on Super Bowl and social media will be in counting all my friends in one place. Should be interesting to see how the dynamics of combining life-long friends and family with more of the friends I’ve made through work will work. I’m thinking it will be a win for all though as my city and rural friends cross over.
Articles on the Way Social Media is Impacting the Super Bowl
- How Social Media & Social TV Will Change Super Bowl 2012 (readwriteweb.com)
- Social Media Takes Over the Super Bowl (pcworld.com)
- How Brands and Teams Use Social Media for the Super Bowl (progressivemediaconcepts.com)
- NFL using “social media command center” to manage Super Bowl chatter (digitaltrends.com)
- Social Media Has Turned Super Bowl XLVI Teams’ Marketing Upside Down (mashable.com)
