Is your timeline full of content you are not really enjoying?

Are you connected to people, you are really not “connected” to anymore.

You may have “friended” people over the years that you now know that are not really aligned with your beliefs, post content you find offensive or simply you are looking at updates that do not interest you anymore.

Now let me preface that before there were fan pages and groups, we were kind of forced to bring everybody in to our pages regardless of affiliation. So much has changed so now I have a place for people who only follow the website or wish to engage me as a coach / speaker. Then my personal page is where I connect with everyone and I often post my thoughts on my journey. That said… it might be time for you to start redirecting people to the appropriate pages.

Today I will share my process of eliminating people from my timeline quietly and seamlessly.

First of all, decide who you want to eliminate. For me it falls in one of the three categories.

• People that I have not spoken to or have not engaged with me in at least a year.

• People who post click bait, offensive content or are consistently pushing their beliefs on others… I can only keep people who respectfully discuss politics and are able to debate without being condescending.

• Industry people who never talk to me, never engage with my content but tag me or post to my page to get visibility. (I actually enjoy deleting these folks and I am doing it on other platforms too)

Despite what people think, I am not big into numbers, I am all about the engagement so I consistently clean out my timelines on all platforms which slows my growth but really allows me to be more connected with my audience.

So here is how you can start cleaning out your timelines today.

In the moment…

If I see someone that falls into one of my three categories above, I delete without hesitation.

or a few people a day.

However, my favorite way to clean my list and make room for new friends that share content I love is using the daily Birthday updates.

If I am planning to stay connected, I simply post Birthday wishes… and drop a note in the inbox to reconnect.

However, if I decide that I am considering deleting, here is what I do;

I utilize the “SEE FRIENDSHIP” button to see the depth of our Facebook friendship and if it does not seem meaningful, DELETE.

In the event that there is true friendship there, I will try to reconnect and see if I can catch up with them and rekindle our friendship.

In the event that we are somewhat engaged, have a friendship but just not feeling the current content stream, I may just opt to see less of them on my timeline by following this process.

I have close to 5000 friends on Facebook… and I noticed that I am deleting on average of 5 people a day (most of which are early followers that migrated over from MySpace and just lost touch, some as early as 2008). I also noticed that I am adding people who are much more engaged and actually add value to my life both personally and professionally.

I must add… that the distance between us may be my fault. I understand and for those of you who delete me first, I will not take it personal, just know for the majority of you my real life status with you supersedes  our facebook connection or lack of. So we may not be FB Friends, but I love you in real life.

To those that have been deleted… they are not forgotten, they are still part of my story just not part of my daily life… let’s get reconnected on snapchat where we can share real moments together.

Also… I am not big on blocking, my page is public and my content can be viewed by anyone on the internet… and I have a fan page if you are more interested in my website than you are in my personal musings.