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From “Career Prescriptions” – Career Opportunities Podcast with Douglas E. Welch)
Transcript:
Now I apply a further rule upon this about who I connect to and who I follow on Twitter and who I friend on facebook and so forth. That is, every person I connect with on any service, whether it is Tuesdays with Transitioners, or Facebook, or anything else, they must have some value. They must be providing some value to me that gives me a reason to follow them. It doesn’t mean they’re a bad person. It just means they talk about their cat a lot. (Laughter) And that’s great when we’re sitting around having, you know, dinner or drinks or something. I like talking about cats. The fact is, it doesn’t provide the value I need in my online world. I’m looking for information, good connections to people to connect up with, new thoughts, underheard people, underseen people, people who have great ideas, but they haven’t really got their ideas out. I am always kind of searching for people like that. So, when I’m figuring out who to connect with online — again on any of these services — I look at their last — I look at their profile. I look at their past page of status updates. I look at their last page of tweets. Whatever ongoing information they’re putting up. I look at that and go, “Does this have value to me or not? Are they saying things which are like ‘Wow! I needed to know that! That’s really good!'” IF they are, I’ll follow them. I’ll friend them. I’ll whatever. If they’re not, I say ignore. It’s Ok to do that. In fact, again, it self preservation to do that. Otherwise you will get overwhelmed.
Douglas is writer and host of Career Opportunities, a long running column and podcast dedicated to “Helping to Build the Career You Deserve!” Career Opportunities began in 1997 as a magazine column and expanded to a podcast in 2004. Douglas is also a New Media Consultant, Technology and Career Consultant with over 30 years experience in high-tech. You can find all of Douglas’ work at DouglasEWelch.com.
