Why It's Hard to Find Truly Like-Minded People on Social Networks

Social media is increasingly complex. Information is shared, people are engaged and relationships are made. We as social network users are looking for a more in-depth relationship where we can learn, celebrate, sometimes commiserate and connect with people in our groups. But your social persona can often be different from who you are as a person. A truer measure of “the real you” is the content you consume – be it blog posts, news articles, Tweets, Instagram posts, videos, etc. But finding like-minded people based on content consumption can be difficult. How do you know what content your neighbor likes if he/she doesn't share it or actively engage with it on their social channels? You really don’t.

There is a misconception that “Like-Minded” means “Exactly The Same” and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Here’s why:

The term “Like-Minded” is fluid. What you may find interesting, someone else in your network could find to be a total bore, yet you are not going to unfriend or unfollow them based on one individual taste. You will just know that you are not like-minded on that specific topic and gravitate towards others who are interested in that topic. This builds better, stronger, more diverse relationships.

What content you “like” is what makes you different from your friends, your co-workers, your family and even your spouse. For example, a significant other may be a die-hard Mets fan, while their partner is a dyed-in-the wool Yankees fan. While they have different specific teams, they each share the common “like” of baseball.

Another factor that makes it hard to find like-minded people on social networks, is that most people are very good at knowing and expressing what they do not like, but are not very good at knowing or expressing what they do like - just look at the proliferation of one-star reviews on Yelp. By being more mindful of sharing the things we like, the bigger and better we can make our social interactions.

Part 2 in my next post.

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