Playing the Social Media Networking game

• How do you go about building a social image?

• In 2025 I think the most used word apart from AI would be networking. You ask someone what skill to learn they would most probably ask you to learn to network rather than suggesting you a technical skill to master. Obviously I 100% agree with it. Tech works through networking. Think about applying to 100s of job applications which involves filling in a dozen of MyWorkday pages for 1 application which takes about 20 min even after using tools that can autofill. How about messaging someone, scheduling an interview directly? Sounds magical right? People these days have this one goal and try to impersonate a perfect hirable profile online.

• This started with LinkedIn and now this cancer is slowly spreading to Twitter.

• Why I call it a cancer? Everyone has different perspectives towards this and in this blog I wanted to speak about mine. I very well know that some of the opinions here are controversial, but you can anytime debate about it in my DMs.

• I don’t like my Twitter feed to be spammed with LinkedIn style LLM generated content

• Let me first brief about a few patterns that I see on Twitter that I don’t like:

  • Buying a blue tick, pasting purely LLM generated content as some kind of a routine to boost the algo every day
  • Posting the same thing in both LinkedIn and Twitter
  • Commenting “let’s connect” just to increase follower count thinking that would give you some breakthrough or advantage (spoiler alert: it does nothing).

• I see networking in a different way. All these which I have mentioned above are nothing but pseudo networking for me. It just adds zero value.

• Real networking is the genuine connections which you make. Just posting a bunch of threads on tech, or whatever, unless it is genuine and very organic, you won’t be able to gather the right audiences or the right eyeballs. Don’t you think your whole purpose of “so called networking” doesn’t work here because all you attract is a bunch of bots and if someone is impressed with such lower quality of content then think about them adding any value to you?

• I hate certain words which I mentioned above. A few of the words I have are networking, deliberately adding value. You might often see people tweeting about how their posts aren’t reaching a lot of people or talking about post’s analytics which in itself is a negative signal to me. I don’t like to be a guy whose only aim is to deliberately add value to others. I want it to happen passively. This is the healthiest way to do it.

• Then what to do? How do you build so-called “network”? Just be yourself. Just being yourself solves almost all of the problems here. You are not a blog, you are a real person behind your account. You have a personality so do your Twitter account.

• You are interested in tech. Good, share your knowledge. Interact with others. Have thought-provoking banters, have fun. This is a thin line. Everyone starts this route but very very quickly diverges into becoming a blog. All you do is post long threads to gain audience and leave. We all are humans, enthusiasm and interest levels are not always the same. So eventually you give up or your audience give up.

• Be a multidimensional person. Remember we are humans not robots. Even robots nowadays learn different skills and have varied interests. We do have a lot of interests. Show them all. There is nothing wrong in it. Yeah you are into tech that doesn’t mean you have to keep spamming tech. Apart from tech I like cricket, cinema etc. Sure you will lose a few people who don’t have the same interest as you. But you will eventually find an intersection of your own crowd. Think about this for a moment. Is it worth losing a handful of followers just because you are yourself? If they are as choosy as this then do you think these guys are worthy in your network? If you stick to something and play the algo game, you will quickly grow as a page but your relationship with other people online will still be shallow.

• Don’t take this route and become a zombie static Twitter account. Static here refers to having no real interactions. This is very very common. You would see folks with 1000s of followers but the account looks dead meanwhile someone with about a few 100s is having his time of the life.

• Think networking this way. You aren’t an expert in the field but you have made a lot of close friends with varied common interests. So isn’t this the most powerful network? You can ask whatever you wanted without any hesitation and like every friendship people reciprocate.

• There are a million ways to curate your work which also includes posting about it on Twitter but you don’t have to be so rigid. You shouldn’t worry about what others think or what your target audience think about you. Be yourself and you will get super cool moots which will help you form a lasting connection. Isn’t this very similar to how knowing people in real life works? Do you hang out with a single dimensional guy who blabbers about computers all day long and nothing else?

• Finally, be based. Be opinionated. Don’t mob simp. The guy who is looking for a job won’t offend HRs, he won’t speak against others even if the opinion doesn’t match. He/she always looks to extract maximum out of others by using his goodness card.

• If you have inhibitions be anonymous. Doesn’t hurt you badly. You can any day relieve yourself to the closest friends you make here.

• Always remember everyone wants to sell you something. If not today someday. Being casual and just using the app as a letout is one way of signalling you are not one among them.

• This is a social media app. Remember. Put your work out but be yourself.