Facebook – Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher

For some time, I have been tinkering with a way to generate publicity for my posts on Facebook personal page. When deciding who to request to be a friend, I look at two criteria.

First, I look at how many friends we have in common.

I select people with whom we share at least one hundred friends (this is a purely subjective and arbitrary number). This tells me that he/she is not a creep. It is essentially like having a hundred references. The closer to having zero friends in common, the better the odds that person many not be someone I want to deal with regularly. At least, that’s my experience. In the past, when I have decided to befriend someone with whom I share no friends, I sometimes regret the decision.

This also helps build a solid network. If I befriend someone who shares one hundred friends with me, when I post something that goes out to my, let’s say, two hundred friends, and then my new friend reposts it, that posts goes out to our one hundred friends in common twice, plus to all his friends that we don’t have in common. If he has one hundred friends in common with me alone, the odds are good that he has a lot more friends which we don’t have in common.

Now imagine how many people your posts will go out to if you have 500 friends with whom you have 100 friends in common with each of them. If only two or three people share one of your posts, the word about that post will start to spread among all those friends in common plus all those friends you don’t have in common. Hopefully, it will create something of a snowball effect.

Second, I seek out friends with whom I have an interest in writing and being an author in common. I decide this very superficially, but I think effectively. I look for people who have a book they wrote as their avatar or have the title “author” or “writer” in their name (e.g. John Doe, Author). This tells me they are serious about their writing as it take a high priority in their lives.

Now, I am developing an overlapping network of authors and writers that will probably be interested in anything I write about writing my works or writing in general.

I also post a lot of humor, about writing and otherwise, to keep my posts fun and entertaining. No one will want to keep up with someone boring.

I welcome any thoughts or ideas you have.