Saturday

If These Walls Could Talk

When it comes to Facebook, your walls actually can talk, and that's why it's important to visit them on a regular basis. Here's a good example why:

The Heartless Contessa Refuses Make-a-Wish Request

I have no idea if this story is true, but when it comes to social networking, it doesn't matter. The Barefoot Contessa, a popular cooking icon, has a fan page that is littered with comment after comment condemning the woman for being the ogre in this story. She has over 50,000 fans and the story is going viral on Facebook. This is not a good thing.

Clearly, nobody is monitoring her Facebook wall, which brings me to the point of this post: go to your profile page daily and clean up house. I even remove posts that are no longer relevant within a week of posting and which have no comments.  Also, thank yous from people for friending them. This makes it easier for new friends to scroll through your first few pages to get a sense of what you're about reading posts of relevance.

I felt compelled to leave a positive comment for the Contessa, and left this message on her FB wall:

This is all over FB. You should perhaps do some damage control and start with an explanation, then monitor your FB comments. Social networking tools require daily upkeep.

The same advice applies to us all.

3 comments:

Lee Ambrose said...

Hmmmm very interesting, Dani -
Thanks for the helpful hints!

Anonymous said...

Dani, I read about this story, too-- what a great way to kill your career in 24 hours.

I've been trying to contact you to see if I can purchase reprint rights for your article "The Quickest Blog Book Tour Guide Ever"

I am publishing a book for small publishers and self-published writers and I am adding a Blog Tours section. Please let me know.

Karen Jones Gowen said...

Excellent point about the upkeep of social media. I hadn't heard about the Contessa brouhaha but I think your message to her is right on. Well said.

I look forward to more of your posts!

KarenG