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Where Is The Social Media Mute Button?

Photo: http://rayhigdon.com/what-numis-network-reps-dont-want-you-to-ask/

Sometimes you just want to pick up the social media remote and press the mute button so that you can filter out some of the posts or tweets littering your feed. Maybe you are totally over hearing about Double Down burgers. Or maybe your feed is full of tweets or posts about an event thats running or a rugger game thats playing. Or perhaps your fav TV show is screening and you don't want a spoiler on it yet. Or you've just had an argument with someone and you just want to filter them out of your life for a while.

On Facebook its easy. On any post, just click the x on the right hand side and choose if you want to hide just that one post or all posts from that person. If you change your mind (and lets face, don't we all from time to time?) just go to the drop down settings beside Most Recent at the top of your feed, and the list of your hidden pages and friends are all shown there.

This means you don't have to unfriend your friend and then refriend them if you have a bit of tiff. In fact, they wont know at all that you've hidden them - perfect.

Likewise LinkedIn has a similar feature. Bless. Although you can only hide all updates from a connection, not a single update.

Over on Twitter though, things are not so easy. You can unfollow someone which will stop their tweets from appearing in your stream, however they can still mention you (but not DM you). They may also notice that you have unfollowed them, so be prepared for that conversation. Or you can block them but that may be too extreme. You also can't filter out a hashtag or tweets with specific words - so you are forced to endure it in exasperation or abandon Twitter completely for a while.

An alternative is to use the Global Filter setting in the Tweetdeck app (thank you to the person who told me about this - you know who you are). You can select words, hashtags, a source or a specific user. No more mentions, DMs, or tweets in your stream. In fact, its like they didn't exist - blissful silence.

And you can clear the filter when you want to.

So easy! Try it and enjoy the peace that it brings.

   

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LinkedIn: A Few Tips. And a Few Grumbles.

LinkedIn. Whats that all about? Isn't it just for people who are looking for a job? 

No. No. No.

LinkedIn is more than that. Its a great way to make new business connections, its your always-up-to-date Rolodex for contacts and email addresses, it's good for discussion groups with like minded professionals around the world and the best part is seeing who has checked out your profile. We all love that bit.

There are now 101 million users on LinkedIn (including 400,000 from right here in NZ). Not quite as many as the 500 million or more on Facebook, but still - quite a lot of people. Nearly 60% of them are male - more than your average social network which tend to be favoured by women. Why is that you ask? Well thats another blog....!!

LinkedIn has a high Google Page Ranking so its worthwhile having your profile there as its likely to be one of the top search results when someone Googles your name. (Try it and see. Go on). 

Through LinkedIn, I've been approached to present at overseas conferences, had some of my blog posts published in NZ magazines, and connected with people around the world in similar industries who I would never had had the opportunity to meet.

Here are a few tips on how to use it if you are new to LinkedIn.

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