Developing a Personal Social Media Strategy: Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter…who am I?

How many social networks and web 2.0 apps can a person use? What do you do with each of these? I read an article recently about a phenomenon where people who had 100’s of friends on Facebook were committing “Facebook Suicide“. Some ‘killed their virtual self’ because of their loss of privacy and others from a sense of ‘how can I really be friends with 500+ people?’ Some start over with a new identity to do a reboot of who they connect with. Others just go through and unfriend vast numbers of people hoping they wont’ notice.
If I could do it all over again, here’s how I would have executed my personal social media plan:
1. BLOGGING: I would have picked a more singular voice for my blog Goodmanson.com. Right now I step between Church Planting, Missional Ecclesiology, Culture, Church Technology, a bit about my work at Monk Development and a very limited level of personal posts. I hope because there is a unifying factor in seeing all these as part of a calling/mission that it still works. I wonder if church planters who read my blog wish I would do more posting on that and less tech related posts and vice versa. Ultimately, I’ve tried not to create a ‘Cat Blog‘ or a ‘Boss Blog‘ but a Viral Blog that spreads ideas online. This means I don’t really blog personal stuff and reserve those postings to other apps.
2. FACEBOOK:facebook If I could do this over again I would friend only those that I am close with on Facebook. I’m closing in on 700 friends and I know that most are acquaintances and some I don’t even know at all. One challenge with this number is that people I’m close to get lost in the stream of the crowd. I continue to post pictures of my friends & family and update my status with things that I imagine are entirely uninteresting to people who aren’t close to me. If people decide to un-friend me because of that I don’t take it personal. If fact, I wish I had early on used LinkedIn for more of the people I know through work.
3. TWITTER: twitterTwitter is an unstoppable force that I haven’t done much with. UPDATED: After I made this post I began to use Twitter primarily to communicate about what we are doing at Monk, church technology and church planting. In this month Twitter became the third highest referral source to my blog. I now use Twitter as a tool to communicate what I am doing in these areas and other links/ideas that my followers may be interested in.
4. LinkedIn: linkedinAs I stated in #2, If I could do it over again I would have connected with more people through LinkedIn. It has a more professional, networking focus that I would use to connect with acquaintances I meet at conferences or through work. I am fine with anyone Linking in with me and hope to expand that network rather than Facebook.
5. OTHERS: As of yet I don’t see a need to join any ‘Christian’ social networking sites just like I don’t go to ‘Christian’ malls. I am a part of a few online community sites that are private and allow me to discuss very specific topics with others who are swimming in similar streams. These include private threads for people to discuss leadership, church planting, technology, etc. These niche sites are helpful and allow us to resource others who have experience in areas important to me.
These are just a few of the ways I would re-do my social networking, what would you do different?