We all have those friends from high school on Facebook that we don’t pay attention to. I don’t mean that to be mean, but the last time you saw these people was probably at least five years ago. And then there’s the friends you don’t even know. You just felt bad and accepted their friend request. But now they won’t stop spamming your news feed.

I sympathize. I really do. But don’t go on a deleting spree just yet.

This article from Inman makes this point:

Great gems could be hiding under that mess. Just think about those old clients and friends you haven’t heard from in a while, or new potential business partners who haven’t had the opportunity to get in front of you.

After years on social media, people have accumulated too many friends, fan page likes and LinkedIn connections that are all competing for space in your news feed. Facebook and LinkedIn think they know what’s best for you, but if you clean your own house, you will see a much more appealing news feed.

Facebook:

Set aside about 10 minutes to scroll through your news feed. As you see people you don’t really know, posts irrelevant to you, or posts that are straight up annoying, hide them by clicking on the upside down triangle in the right-hand corner of the post.

You can also unfollow them, which will remove the posts from your news feed for good. However, you will still “like” the fan page or be friends with that person.

But the best part is that they will never know you unfollowed them in the first place. It can be our little secret.

Happy Facebooking!

LinkedIn:

One thing to keep in mind here is that LinkedIn is about business whereas Facebook is for promoting yourself or your brand. In other words, keep it clean on LinkedIn.

You should keep it clean on Facebook too, of course, but there it would be acceptable to post a picture of your pet three times in one day. On LinkedIn, not so much.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, LinkedIn makes it really easy to hide someone—just hover up to the top right-hand corner of the update box and you’ll see the “hide” button. It might be one of the best inventions ever. But don’t fret, there’s also a hide button in case you change your mind.

Do this for several unwanted individuals or fan pages in your news feed, and the next time you fire it up, I promise you’ll be invigorated by the fresh faces of friends, clients and fan pages you actually want to pay attention to.

But keep in mind too that the more rapidly you accumulate connections and follow pages, the more often you should clean house.