Facebook – Befriending Too Soon
There’s no official ethic code for any social network. But some things aren’t done. Befriending someone one Facebook just to send him a link to your blog is problematic, but it happens too often. Let’s identify the networking issue and suggest a better way to do it.
Facebook Networking Done Wrong
When a person you don’t know befriends me on Facebook, I politely ask the obvious question: Do I know you? When I have the patience, I also add a few more words, such as: We have mutual friends, but I don’t seem to recall you.
Many of these people aren’t serious and ignore my message. After two or three days, I reject their friend request. I don’t know them, and they missed their chance of explaining me why they want to befriend me.
Recently I’ve encountered many cases of a different sort: they respond to my message, telling me that they have a blog they want me to read or a page to become a fan of.
I would be quite reluctant to befriend someone using this approach. Facebook friends are not necessarily friends in real life. Some people have many hundreds of friends, and some have thousands. Despite this fact, Facebook users don’t automatically approve friend requests from anonymous people. This may be rightfully considered as spam – Facebook spam.
Facebooking – a better approach
If they want to promote their blog, the least they could do was check out my Facebook profile and see that I also have a blog. Having spent this minimal effort, they could check out my blog, read a post or two and respond there with the address of their blog. I would expect them to respond to the post and not just promote their blog. This issue deserves a post of its own.
If I didn’t have a blog linked from my Facebook profile, approaching me on Facebook isn’t ruled out. The better way to do it is send a message on Facebook. A message would work much better as a first step of networking for someone anonymous.
A polite message, stating that they don’t know me, but think I might be interested in checking out their blog could work. If I get too many messages like this, I might ignore them, but I may also respond to such a message and indeed pay a visit to their blog.
Sending a message can work out as a first step of networking in Facebook. Sending a friend request will probably be rejected.
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