Today is National Unfriend Day. The typical holidays we celebrate at this time of year tend to revolve around togetherness, giving and thankfulness. So you might be wondering how a day ended up being devoted to unfriending, well, your friends! But don’t sell National Unfriend Day short–if a classmate from second grade, who you’re not sure actually graduated with you, is whining about a missed flight to his beach house in the Bahamas; or your third cousin’s ex-husband is going off about the last shot of a game for a sport you don’t watch; or your aunt, twice removed, is complaining about the weather again because her cats don’t like it and she attached photographic proof, this holiday is for you.
Upon seeing these status updates, it makes you realize that you don’t know some of these people very well, are not interested in developing further relationships with them, aren’t quite sure what the point is, and at most, either cringe from their posts or are completely unmoved at all. What great timing! It sounds like you are in a good position to celebrate today’s holiday.
National Unfriend Day started as a made-up holiday by talk show host Jimmy Kimmel in 2010 to encourage you to “cut out some of the friend fat in your life” on Facebook. It turns out thinning your list of “friends” and seeing who is important in your life wasn’t a passing fad; it caught on and kept going years later, now celebrated every November 17.
So how can National Unfriend Day be useful to you in the business world? Today can be used as an opportunity to put your own social media pages under the microscope. Think about it–would YOU want to follow your own business’ Facebook page? How about Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.? Or would you want to unlike or unfollow?
When reviewing your own business pages today, keep these questions in mind:
- Are you practicing social media or social listening?
- Are you just selling or helping customers decide?
- Are you posting simply for the sake of posting or using it to find customers and/or expand your business?
- Do you treat your followers like numbers and “likes” or actual people with whom you communicate?
The latter half of each question serve as examples as to why National Unfriend Day is useful in business. If you can’t honestly say that you’re doing all of the above, it’s time to reevaluate yourself as your own friend on Facebook and the rest of the sites. You most certainly don’t want others to be celebrating this holiday with you in mind!
Do you wait for November 17 to trim down your list of friends and businesses or is it an ongoing process throughout the year?
