What Boundaries Do You Set on Social Media?

I posted the following on a LinkedIn discussion list called “Step Into the Spotlight, ” regarding the appropriateness of the new LinkedIn endorsement tool, and whether to endorse back. The consensus, which I agree with, is not to endorse people you don’t know. I thought you’d enjoy the discussion, so I’m sharing my post with you. The above link goes to the entire discussion.

I invite you to comment below about your own policies about whom you choose to connect with on social media.

The whole crazy thing about the new LinkedIn endorsement tool makes no sense to me. I don’t even click on them anymore because I know I’m going to be greeted with a screen asking me to endorse back, for something where I have no clue if they’re qualified. If it’s someone I know well, I will click over, and endorse if I feel I can. And I agree, it completely devalues the endorsement.

I feel badly that the tool does not have an easy way to send a message back (like “thank you”). It is too many steps and I don’t have the time. I’d love to see a button to click that would thank people for their endorsement and let it go at that. But sometimes I have 10 or more coming in, and I have a business to run.

And yes, I have been asked a few times to do a real endorsement and said no because I don’t know their work–and because I have made my reputation on the basis of business ethics and green principles as success principles and won’t violate that. The answer is always greeted with respect, and often with an apology.

However…on whom to connect with…my policy, as a somewhat public figure, is to say yes to all connection requests on both LI and FB unless I have a reason not to. It’s easy enough to sever the connection if the person is inappropriate, but I’ve only had to do that about five times in six years–and I refused one connection request from one person I know personally and who is nothing but trouble.

I find there are a small handful of people who have friended me and then actually built a relationship, and I think that’s great. Actually, Tsufit [the founder of this particular discussion group] is in that category; I didn’t know or even know of her before she invited me here. We had a very nice phone visit last week, in fact.

Now with Twitter, I’m fussier. I do feel guilty that I don’t have time to visit every one of my 6000+ followers’ profiles and decide whether to follow back. I won’t use the automated tools, though; I want to be in control of my Twitter stream. It keeps a lot of spam out and enables Twitter to still be useful. So what I do is once every week or two I look at the new-follower notices and open up anyone I actually know, and anyone whose screen handle catches my attention, and follow back those I like. A lot of them have unfollowed by then but Twitter is not a numbers game for me. The others–if they retweet or engage me, I’ll check them out.