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How do you know who to connect with on the social web? How do you filter?
What tools do you use to filter out the noise on the social web? Klout? PeerIndex?
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11 Answers
I screen on three factors 1) Are they a peer or prospect? 2) Is their profile complete and who are their connections. 3) My gut reaction to their request.
I believe the goal on web 2.0 is to have a wide variety of contacts and I consider all of my interests not just my main business when connecting.
I don't use tools - I read what they say about themselves. I believe how they talk about themselves is very informative what they include what they leave out.
I would add to Mana's answer that you can use Google to filter your Twitter searches. For example, if want to check out Marketing VPs on Twitter, type the following on Google edit box:
"intext:bio * marketing vp" site:twitter.com
You can search twitter handles in Klout to get a sense of the person's actual influence. Just because someone has 10k followers doesn't mean they have great influence, especially if they are only tweeting their own news, not interacting, etc.
I use Klout. Works great!
Can you tell me how you use Klout?
assuming you know the characteristics of your audience, do a bio search and find people who meet those characteristics. The tool I like to use for ad-hoc searches is filtertweeps.com. So for example if I want to chat with CTOs search for Twitter people who have CTO in their bio. I hope this helps.
If it's FB or LinkedIn, I review the friends/associates we have in common. Every sub-group is a community with potential networking value for my business.
Hi Caty,
Like Susan, I use Klout as well, but there are many other tools worth investigating:
http://www.freshnetworks.com/blog/2010/12/free-tools-for-finding-social-media...
These tools can help find interesting sources but ultimatly I choose who to follow based on their content.
Cheers,
Glen
I agree Erin, the amount of followers tells you virtually nothing about the value of the Twitter account. I have a Klout of 42. I'll look for other influencers to follow. What is your score?
Tools and indexes can be a useful way to identify the right people to interact with in social media, but the most important factor, at least to me, is the relationship. The value of a personal connection can't always be measured by a tool.
Barbara touched on it in her answer, saying that her gut plays a role in deciding who to connect with. It's not always about popularity, topics, expertise, followings and activity...sometimes, the connection with someone who seems to present the lowest business potential can lead to a number of benefits -- in business and beyond.
Implied in some of the responses but not explicitly stated is that the answers to your questions should be driven by your goals and objectives. For example, although I'm not a LION, I accept almost every request to connect with me on LinkedIn because as a business owner and thought leader, I want to reach the broadest audience possible. I view requests to connect as effectively the same as opting in to my mailing list and/or following me on another platform. On the other hand, I accept almost no friend requests from people I only know professionally. Although I have two Facebook pages, my personal account is exactly that - personal, and I have a very high bar for letting people into my personal life/activity.
Knowing what you want helps you decide what to do...
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