Social Media and Colleagues: Who and Where Do You Connect?

I was updating an older post how to finish internshipand I stumbled upon some old advice about not asking superiors you barely know to “Contact” you because it was the equivalent of a redirect. We also received a ton of posts about it during the day. What should you do if your boss sends you a friend request on Facebook?. We haven’t talked about either of them in a long time, let’s discuss!

Here are the questions:

• How do you use LinkedIn (if you do)?
• How do you use Facebook, Instagram and TikTok (if any)?
• Do you have rules about which co-workers you “befriend” or connect with?
• (Do you have rules about who to be friends with or hook up with in life?)

For my own $0.02:

I primarily use LinkedIn for professional connections; I will also connect with good friends on LinkedIn. I think that’s a lot less “recommendation equivalent” than it was zillions of years ago, just to me, I like to keep LinkedIn in that professional zone. I do not post content on LinkedIn and do not share any thoughts on LinkedIn in this public domain. I don’t even control the public domain for people to share their thoughts – I use LinkedIn the same way I use Home Depot, I only log in if I need something and don’t browse when I get there.

{relating to: best LinkedIn settings for job searching}

I still use Facebook, Insta and TikTok, but I use them in different ways.

For Facebook, I’ve set my privacy settings so that only real friends can see my posts – accordingly, I’m not overprotective about who I’m friends with on Facebook. and friends with a ton of neighbors and parents that I know from things about children. (I also don’t post much to be honest!) The greatest value I get from Facebook is the various special interest groups I’m in, whether it’s my neighborhood, kids issues, or blogging issues. I tend to use groups as a really specialized Google – if I’m looking for something very specific, I’ll look there first. (For example, there has been a big transition to Google Analytics recently and when I was looking for information about GA4 I went straight to the various blog groups I was involved in on Facebook.)

(For work, I post content to the Corporette and CorporetteMoms Facebook pages, and pay a decent amount for third-party services… Yet we have very low reach unless I promote a post, so I really only do the bare minimum there. I recently changed the settings so my login info I can’t post a funny meme on Corporette or C-Moms Pages without changing etc., which would cause a lot of pain.)

I use Instagram both personally and professionally. Professionally, I seldom transfer content there, although I try to get better at it. I follow many food bloggers, exercise bloggers and a few style/shopping/decoration creators on my personal account. Still, the idea of ​​”perfectly picked Instagram” has always bothered me a little bit, so I don’t use it very often – maybe check my feed a few times a week. My real-life friends are largely absent on Instagram, though – I followed a neighbor posting clothes for a while, and it felt really weird, so I unfollowed her.

I use TikTok almost entirely personally, although I have an account for Corporette there and have accumulated a few things that I can share in that capacity at a later date. (We’ll see.) I greatly prefer TikTok to be messy and real compared to Instagram – yes, even with filters that are really crazy if you haven’t looked at them. But it all comes off the headlines and easy. Kate I send each other stuff through TikTok but most of my other friends are not there.

Again, I see TikTok as a dedicated search engine – if I want to learn something quickly, I can usually find fifteen different short clips that talk about just that thing; A very fast way to learn. (I’m not much into YouTube, but I prefer TikTok’s short length to endlessly long YouTube videos.) I follow zillions of people out there, including people talking about fashion, design, diet, cooking, exercise, gardening, books, and more. I do. . For some reason, there is little overlap between the people I follow on Tiktok and the people I follow on Instagram.

I use LTK as the equivalent of TikTok – If there is someone on TikTok whose style I like, click the link to go to their LinkTree or something; instead I’ll go to the LTK app and see instant product links to everything it posts. I hardly ever use LTK professionally, but I need to get more into it!

Readers, what about you – how do you use LinkedIn these days and who do you connect with? How about Facebook if you still use it?

(Full disclosure: I still have some stock on facebookand stock previously owned on LinkedIn. For more details, see Here.)

Stock photo via stencil.