Are You Judged By The Company That You Keep?

Growing up, my parents always taught me that you can tell a lot about a person by the friends that they keep. I remember my grandfather always saying, “If you hang out with garbage, you start smelling like trash’. Through the years I have found this to be mostly true. It is no secret that people tend to judge you by the company that you keep.

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That being said, I can’t help but equate these statements to the people on our facebook friends list. The people that you allow on your facebook friends list can and do say more about you than you realize.

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If the comments left by friends on your posts reflect a particular type of personality or image be it good or bad, it is most likely thought that your own personal character or image mirrors the same.

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I will be the first to say that there is nothing wrong with having a diverse friend base but I would also have to question one’s personal character when it comes to the comments and posts that they tolerate and allow to grace their facebook for all to see.

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Thus, if there’s even the slightest opportunity for another person to make a decision on you based on those you engage with via social media platforms isn’t it perhaps wise to look at those you engage with and decide as to whether they serve a purpose or are likely to impact on you without your knowledge, either positively or negatively?

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Here are ten personality types that could affect your popularity or otherwise online

see how many you can identify and whether it’s time for a little spring cleaning?

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The Creator

his person creates content and shares information and ideas in a positive way. They’re happy to share their experience and you can learn from them, or make valuable contacts through them. These are great people to have in your network as they’re warmly received by others too and tend to create for themselves a virtual community with common interests or ideals.

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The Activist 

Always ready to fight the cause, no matter how near or far away or how relevant or otherwise it is to their everyday life. Social media has given them a voice and they intend to use it. While you may be entertained, or even agree with their sentiments on occasion, do you think you’d like your fans or followers to believe that because you’re friendly online that you share their views?
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The Joker

They can be entertaining at first, but a stream of jokes that range from funny to daft to offensive with little of substance in-between will eventually bore or offend you enough to remove yourself. The trick with this one is to decide if the occasional giggle is worthy of the more usual humorous updates of their taste.
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The Friend

This is the person who makes the effort to get to know those who’ve followed, connected with, circled or liked them – and not just for whatever’s in it for them. They take an interest in people and are great for building networks. These people are great connections to have, as undoubtedly they’ll go to great lengths to introduce you to other likeminded souls and they’re quite likely to take the community offline too developing real-world friendships too.
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The Spammer

They auto-tweet on the hour and share every single update from their favorite website with you, even if that particular website boasts hundreds of thousands of followers for a reason and they’ve got ten! They rarely create any original content of their own, but are quite happy to chat about anything and everything in between sharing the work of others.

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The Know-all

Think of a topic and they know all about it. Doesn’t matter that their professional expertise is in one area, they know all about everybody else’s business too – and they make sure that everybody knows just how great they are.
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The Nice Guy
They enjoy some light banter but never try to sell you anything or force their opinion on you. They’re not caught up in growing their numbers, preferring to log on occasionally and have a chat before heading back to their offline world again. These are nice connections to make, never controversial and enjoyable company online when they appear.
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The Guru

The term “guru” in somebody’s bio or info section should send out alarm bells in itself, but if they’re a social media guru with 20,000 tweets and 54 followers there’s something seriously wrong. Same goes if they’re a “guru” in one given topic yet updates cover almost anything except their area.

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The Complainer

Big fans of naming and shaming, they complain openly about customers when a deal falls through or about another business who don’t want to air their dirty linen in public and have expressed a preference to professionally take the complaint offline. Then they try and encourage all their social media “friends” to join in the chat too!

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The Follower -

They follow everybody they come across and when they’re not followed back, they unfollow – even follow a second or third time, in an attempt to make sure that they’ve been noticed. They also go to the trouble of telling you on your facebook page that they’ve liked you – and just where they can find your page so you can return the favor!

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The very nature of social media lends itself to research on businesses and individuals with so much more information available in the public domain than ever before. If you are therefore going to consider forging a connection with another, is it reasonable to assume that you’ll be judged not just by what you say but by your interactions with others too? And more so than the mere interactions, will you be judged by the types of people you interact with?