I’ve had two “bad habits” with social media. I accept every Facebook friend request. I follow back everyone on Twitter.

This led to 3,200 friends on Facebook and 6,000 followers on Twitter.

The result is an overwhelming amount of spam from event invites, app requests, group additions, messages and Twitter DMs.

It’s made the signal-to-noise ratio on Facebook and Twitter really bad for me. Too much noise, not enough signal.

So I’ve come to a tough conclusion: I have to change how I use social media.

The interesting thing is that most of those 3,200 Facebook friends and 6,000 Twitter followers are real, awesome people who I enjoy interacting with. They follow my work in technology, or at Sierra College, or perhaps we know each other from advocating for adoption and orphan care.

But a bunch of them aren’t, and I’m making it worse because I’m doing it wrong.

I’m not going to give up all the wonderful things I get from social media. I’ve learned incredible things from people sending me @ replies on Twitter. I’ve gotten great input in my elected role at Sierra College from folks on Facebook. I’ve developed really important business relationships and deepened real-life friendships.

And I’ve even made a few amazing friends that I haven’t even met in real life. (One of those friends in particular is one of my favorite people in New Hampshire…you know who you are!)

So here’s what I’ve changed.

• I’ve converted my old Facebook profile to a page using Facebook’s migration tool, so I haven’t lost all of my friends. All of my posts will go there so I can keep talking with you, interacting with you and commenting on your stuff too.
• I made a new Facebook for personal friends so they can invite me to events and such. If you know my e-mail address, you can probably find it. I won’t be posting much to that page, though…if I don’t want it public, I don’t put it online!
• If you know me personally (online or offline), please feel free to friend me on my personal page. Facebook wouldn’t let me friend everyone I knew on my old profile, so please don’t feel snubbed or anything. Just be patient while I try to get all 500 to 600 personal friends accepted.
• If you don’t know me personally yet, I hope I’ll get to know you soon.
• And finally, I’m not going to follow everyone back on Twitter. I’ll try to skim through and follow back the real people who look interesting, but I know I’m going to miss a bunch of great people. If I should be following you back, send me an @ mention and say hi! I try to read all of those.

I’m hoping these changes will make social media an even more powerful tool than it was before for talking, interacting and getting to know you.

Don’t be a stranger!

Update: Just to be clear, to “know me” isn’t necessarily to have met in real life! There are a number of people I’ve met in real life who I don’t know. There are a number of people I’ve only met online who I really know. If you feel like we know each other, please go ahead and friend my personal Facebook page (just be patient as I catch up). The goal here isn’t exclusivity, just the elimination of spam.