Time for a Marie Kondo on your socials? Seven types of content and content creators.

I love social media.

It's such a great way to pick up what's happening around the place - whether it's weak signals for new trends, deep insight pieces from my favourite authors or just taking time to scratch my head at particular conversation bubbles that are miles away from mine.

But what's the right way to curate your content feeds?

There's a lot to be said for cleaning out things from your life that don't bring you joy.

But how should you go about it? Who do you follow? Who to unfollow? Who to mute?

Social media in a post-COVID world

Before working out what to do on socials, it's worthwhile checking where we've been and where we are now.

Phase 1: Quality content for your peers, but in public.

In the early days of LinkedIn and Twitter were places for academics, journalists and thought leaders to share great content and breaking stories with their peers. It was a window into the thinking of really smart people, often before they'd gone to print or fully tested their ideas and also from people you might not ever get to meet. A truly awesome way to get inspired and stay sharp. Very special.

The defining characteristic of this era was the motivation was quality content for the benefit of your peers. Stats weren't much of a focus.

Phase 2: Volume driven.

Then came the age of volume-driven self-publicity, largely driven by social media metrics and ad revenue. This shifted the paradigm to "Be seen. Put yourself out there even if you have nothing to say."

There was even an idea floating around that you should like, comment or post or share every day, or in some cases 3 times a day even if you have nothing to add to the conversation.

I never subscribed to this idea - talk about dulling the senses and crowding everyone out. In the days of social media 0.1 we used to call this #flooding, which moderators promptly responded with /kick or /ban commands as it got in the way of the useful parts of the conversation. If you engaged in this sort of thing, sorry, I probably unfollowed you years ago.

Phase 3: Shouting into a noisy room

In the age of the attention economy, attention is currency.

During COVID things ratcheted up. People were overloaded and the usual content plays weren't cutting through - at the same time as everyone has a platform and was publishing. Quality was being lost in the din.

So in a desire to get people's attention, people published even more content and introduced bots, doubling down on the torrent content overwhelm instead of recognising the problem and paring back.

And of course there's breaking news sources. To be fair there during COVID was a lot of breaking news, but maybe #doomscrolling it's not a habit you want to carry into 2021.

My hope for phase 4: A return to quality.

People only have so much time. If you share something it needs to be worth it. There's nothing worse than a poor recommendation. It damages your brand.

What content are you following and what content are you generating?

People spend a lot of time on their LinkedIn profiles, but possibly less on their content. How you interact on LinkedIn says as much about you as your bio. Probably more.

Are you known as a source of great content? Or something else?

Here's my rough guide on LinkedIn content as I see it.

1. Great content: Genuinely valuable to the network. Prioritise. Like and share. Don’t allow others to crowd this out.
2. Not great content (yet): Someone you like who tries hard but is not there yet. Support them if you think they have potential. If not, and if they’re crowding out your feed and might be time to mute for a while.
3. Breaking news: Do you really need to know all of this before the daily news bulletin or official report? Or are you procrastinating? How much #doomscrolling do you really want in your life? Compartmentalise.
4. High-frequency bots: Bots (and sometimes people) who reshare the same content over and over in case you might have missed it. They're crowding your feed. Subscribe to their newsletter or RSS feed instead.
5. Flooders and post-clickers: People who frequently and consistently like and comment on things that aren’t useful to you their network, including spambait. If you need to keep things tight, the right answer might be to unfollow them on these channels.
6. Crazy people/outrage posts: People who don't think like you or seem totally unhinged. Sometimes they might be onto something, but don't let conspiracy theories or outrage dominate your feeds. Compartmentalise. Do not comment ever - it's rocket fuel for this category.
7. List Harvesters: People you don’t know who ask you to comment, double-tap an image or reply via an emoji. You've seen the ones - polls requiring as an emoji response instead of being created as a poll. Often these are harvesting contact lists, possibly for identity theft. If this seems ingenuine, right-click or double-tap and report as spam. Do not click on these from anyone you don't know.

The new year cleanse + a bit of restraint

When you review, generate or share content this year, have a look at it.

Is this a great content or a great content source?

Does this person consistently generate useful content?

If not, maybe it's time to unfollow or mute for a while so you can get to to the good stuff.

And when you are about to hit an emoji or comment on this platform, remember it goes in the feed of everyone on your contact list. It says more about you than it does about the content.

Have a think about your post first. Is it really going to add much to your network? If not a personal message or phone call might be just the shot for the new year. People would love to hear from you, particularly if they're active on social media.

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Todd Davies has been recognised as a top 10 global thought leader in his field for 3 out of the last 5 years. He specialises in high quality, infrequent content and occasionally drowns in a torrent of social media.