It’s amazing how connected we feel on social media, isn’t it?
As someone with family across Canada, it’s a miracle to be able to share experiences and photos with them and keep up with their lives.
But what about when that connectivity gets to be a bit too much?
I’ll use Twitter as an example:
Do you REALLY care about each and every tweet you see as you scroll?
At the time, when you chose to follow certain people, maybe it was to have them follow you in return. Perhaps, at the time, you really did care about what they were tweeting about.
Twitter is noisy and chaotic in the BEST of times. There’s no denying it.
When other social media profiles begin feeling the same way, it’s time to take control and get to decluttering.
Decluttering your social media is beneficial for your personal peace of mind, just like cleaning out your closet. Here’s why:
Once you clean up, you will find that the tweets and posts you are seeing are better quality and more beneficial to you. Your social media will feel organized and manageable. Not a random mess you walk into every day.
If it’s difficult to remember where you saw an awesome post, you are following too many accounts or people. Following fewer people will reduce stress and keep those connections more personal. And you might even have an easier time find that post you were looking for.
How can you achieve a more streamlined social media presence? Here are examples I’ve personally used:
Facebook Groups
There is a Facebook group for just about everything, and it’s very easy to find yourself in a large number of them. Do you really need to be in all of them? I challenge you to go into Facebook, right now, and look at your Facebook Groups:
- Log into your account.
- Click on Groups in the left sidebar.
- There will be two options at the top, Groups and Discover. Choose Groups.
Any pending group applications should be canceled. If they haven’t accepted you by now, they won’t be doing it anytime soon.
Review the groups you’re in, and ask yourself if you really need each particular group. If the answer is no, click on the gear next to that group, and click Leave Group.
You will soon find your Facebook feed is less populated by posts you no longer find relevant, thanks to decluttering.
Facebook Friends
If there’s one thing to love about Facebook, it’s that you can connect with old classmates and college roommates. If you ever see these people in person, will there be a conversation? Err on the side of no. Probably not.
So, with Facebook friends, you have one of two choices:
Unfriend the people you wouldn’t dream of saying hello to in person. It doesn’t matter if you’ve “known” them since you were 4 years old. They are taking up your precious Facebook feed and causing undue stress, whether you realize it or not.
Unfollow them. This is truly my favourite feature on Facebook. Scroll through your feed. When reading posts, think about the person and think about their content. Is this the first time they’ve posted something questionable or uninteresting? Probably not, right? If you can’t bring yourself to unfriend them, you need to unfollow them. There are a couple of ways to do this:
On a mobile, click on their profile, where it says Friends (with a checkmark), tap that and click Unfollow. You can also Take a Break, a newer feature that allows you to see less from that person.
On a PC, click on their profile, and hover your mouse where it says Following (with a checkmark), and select Unfollow. You will remain friends but won’t see any future posts from them. You can change this back anytime.
In your feed, you can click on the three little dots next to someone’s post, and click Unfollow.
I’m not going to lie, decluttering Twitter is tedious, but very well worth it when you’re finished.
I recently signed up for a Status Brew social media scheduling account. When I was fumbling through the app, I found some Twitter tools that I thought were amazing. The best one was Audience for Twitter. It showed me accounts that I was following that haven’t posted anything for months or years.
True, they weren’t contributing to my social media noise, but why follow them? I cleared them out stat!
If you want to be thorough, the way to do it is to log into Twitter, the desktop version is easier to work with.
Once in your account, click on your profile. Next, click on Following.
These are all the people you are following. I find it’s best to unfollow from here because you can see bios at a glance and determine if you still want to follow each person, then and there.
Use Twitter Lists!
You can have up to 1000 lists on Twitter, and these can also help cut back on the noise.
To create a list, click on your Twitter image to bring up the drop-down menu. Select Lists. Click Create New. You can name it whatever you like. You can also select whether it’s a public or private list. Locked is private, unlocked is public. People added to a public list will be notified that you’ve added them to your list.
To review the tweets of the people within your lists, click on Lists, and select which list you’d like to look at. There, you will see ONLY the tweets of people you’ve added to that list. Neat, huh?
Decluttering your social media is like spring cleaning – you’ll feel so much better once it’s done!
I hope you’ve found this post to be helpful, but if you need some help in this area, book a free consultation call with me and let’s do this together.
