First off, a confession. I feel guilty whenever I say the word “social media”. The only reason I repeat it is because because I know that people I talk to are pre-populated with the idea of social media. You are, right ? So am I but I’ve never felt comfortable using the word. In fact, I prefer something meaningful than social media. Something like “Friends Circle Media” or “My Group” or “Friend groups”. But that doesn’t sound “professional” does it ? See, thats the whole problem. “Social Media” is like one of the words the stock news guy uses often, when it really means something more simpler to me.

Anyways, that’s not what I wanted to discuss today. The thing is by using something like “Social Media”, we tend to forget the real meaning of the whole process. It makes it dry, there’s no fun. While I agree that “Friendly media”  is a unprofessional term, that’s the whole essence of “social media and we need to use it more in perspective.

Social Media is a #fail if you cannot make friends, we all know that. But then the chicken-egg question comes up. Were you first on social media or your friends group gradually grew up to evolve into social media channel ? Either way, if you got to enjoy the social media experience, you got to be friendly, fun and making a lot of friends as you go. I’m sure you know better than me, but let me point out what I thought are important points that will make you lot of friends on social media.

1. Have an open mindset.

Its very important to have an open mindset to everything and everyone if you got to make friends as you go. You will come across different type of people, “seemingly” harsh people, tactical, rude, lovely people and all of that. And unless you keep an open mind you cannot enjoy their company, as you bounce off their external, deceptive shell. Like the “seemingly harsh” people I told you, are people who aren’t actually harsh but since they “show up” as harsh/rude because of poor communication skills, can be deceptive. If you don’t have the patience to listen to them, and an open mind set, you can get pissed off easily and avoid such people. Who misses ? You.

2. Nurture an urge to learn new things.

There’s a lot to listen and learn in this world. And social media is the best tool you can get today. So why aren’t you making best use of it. Take a look at the old times, when you knew about an earthquake only one day later on the news. Now you can talk to the person standing right there in the middle of it all. Isn’t that unbelievable ? I think its super-duper-awesome to be able to connect to the whole world, and enjoy the whole energy around. So have an urge to learn new things, only then you can find and enjoy all the little things of this world.

3. Keep unlearning a few things and keep evolving.

The biggest mistake one could do is to stick to everything you once thought was right. We all make mistakes, so its okay to unlearn those things and move on to better things. I am an example. When twitter was first introduced, I thought its a time waster. And I stood the stand of an anti-twitter guy, and you know what happened later on. So don’t keep a stubborn mind, you find lot of new things happening on social media everyday, so try and keep up with them, while shedding off the wrong things and mistakes in the past.

4. Don’t suck up to people, create your own circle of friends.

No, that doesn’t mean a rebel movement. Sucking up to someone else might give you something but not always. You need to have an individuality and identity of your own and that’s what people like. For whatever less you are, people will love you for it, for being you, and staying that way.

5. Aping what others do is fine for a start, but improvise on it.

I’d lying if I said that you shouldn’t ape what others did. You got to do it at some point of time even if you didn’t like it. But don’t let that be the only thing you do. If everyone tweets mashable, you tweet it too but then you got to find better websites that isn’t as popular as mashable, but got better content. That way, you contribute to the community in your own unique way, and people will love you for it.

So there you have it, tip of the ice berg – five tips for you to become more friendly and enjoy the social media experience. And I know that you knew it well than me. I’m no guru either, just think of it as a conversation starter, let us know what your ideas are, what you learned from the social media experience, from your friends.