Journey

I knew it was coming one day soon, but today was the first time I received this message while trying to ‘become a fan’ of a page “Sorry, you cannot add any more friends or fan more pages without removing some first.

Damnit. I really want to be a fan of this guy.

I thought that Facebook had a limit of 5,000 Friends but that it wouldn’t affect pages I wanted to be a fan of.

Guess I was wrong in that assumption.

Time to Cull.

No time to waste, I’ve got a million things I need to do, but I know I need to cull some friends and fan pages, so I chose to remove:

1. Friends with no photo, unless they were located in a custom-list.
ie: if they are a drupal programmer, or similar, and didn’t have a photo, I left them as a friend because I want to be friends with them and I understand why programmers don’t upload their photos ;)

2. Photos that were: “Business Logos, Flowers, Microsoft Clip-Art, Products, and US Dollars”

3. People who were still listed as “Friend Request Pending”
(I had at some stage requested to be their friend, but they must of clicked on ignore)

4. Groups/Fan pages that I haven’t visited in over a year

5. People who never introduced themselves via a message in their Friend Request or email/wall post, and have not had any contact with me since adding me – so I have no idea who they are (maybe just people wanting to build their list, or maybe they just hadn’t had any reason to make contact yet)

6. Photos of near-naked people who, to me, look like people who just want to use it to find a relationship or to spam their product.

I create lists for my main interests, clients, geographic locations, businesses, etc, and I also have lists by Year/Month.

The list spans all the way from A to Z.. but you get the idea from the image above.

Every person that I add on Facebook gets added to the “Year/Month”, as well as another group if they have the same ‘interest’.

If I met them via the 30 Day Challenge, then they would go into my “A – 2010-Mar” list and also into “- Thirty Day Challenge”

If they indicate that they met me on Twitter, they would go into my “A – 2010-Mar” list and also into my “Twitter” list, etc)

If they are Australian, I’ll add them to my Australia list, and also my “A – 2010-Mar” list. One day I may also sort by state, but my business is global, it doesn’t particularly matter to me, but it’s something that you might want to think about if your business is local.

If I have no idea at all who they are, then they just go into the Year/Month list.

I haven’t always been this organised, so many are only listed under one list, but ever since I realized the benefits, I’ve become very strict with myself to do it right :)

The real benefit is being able to find people that share your interest quickly, and find news that interests ‘you’ much easier.

Also, if you have a joint-venture coming up about a certain subject, are marketing to a particular niche, or have a local event coming up – you already have a list of people categorized that might be interested.

Only inviting people who are Arabic and have interest in Studying in Australia to my “Arabic Speakers – Study in Australia” fan page.

… People who are into WordPress, to my I love WordPress Plugins fan page.

… People who are into “The Secret” to my “I love The Secret” group.

… People who are an “SGR Affiliate” to my “Leverage The Secret” group.

And for my “WebWooky” Fan page – to not annoy people with requests over and over again – basically, at the end of each month, I invite my new friends from the previous month to become a fan of my WebWooky Fan page (my main fan page).

Not a big benefit when you are just starting out on Facebook, but when you are starting to reach your 5,000 Friend limit, having your lists organized is a huge time-saver. I can make sure I never remove someone that I personally requested to add, see how long they have been a friend and if it’s over a year and I still don’t recognise who they are, then most likely we’ve never had any contact and I am safe to remove them.

Removed just over 400 friends today, and I hope that my pre-organizing will mean that noone will get offended because they will only be people who either never had any contact with me anyway, use it only for mlm/affiliate/spam marketing (so they wouldn’t notice me gone anyway) or doesn’t use Facebook much (people who still haven’t uploaded a real photo).