A few years ago, I got into several pretty heated debates with people who were creating multiple personal accounts on the social network to surpass the 5,000 friend limit….
I was told quite bluntly to leave them alone and that ‘I would understand when I could get to 5,000 friends’.
Recently, I’ve noticed quite a lot of posts lately by these same people who are now shocked that they need to continuously do, namely:
a) cross-post statuses/photos/videos across all their profiles, and,
b) PAY to reach more than 15ish percent of their 5,000 batches of friends, who may even over-lap.
c) Messed up privacy settings on various accounts could limit the reach of each content piece, even though it has been duplicated.
d) Multiple hours of management of each account with broken communication processes due to different comments/messages/communities.
I’m sure those of you who are good at math will see why this is a brutally inefficient…
So, instead of sending them all a massive “I told you so”, I return to the FREE advice I gave them initially… Your personal account is about you and your network, if you want to grow a personal brand to over 5,000 contacts, enable subscriptions; create a page or setup a twitter account.
(Note: for pages and subscriptions, payment to promote posts may still be necessary, however, no duplication of fans/followers/subscribers will distort the ad spend’s effectiveness)
Keep the passion,