We have all been down the rabbit hole with Alice. Getting unwanted emails, Facebook pages/groups/events and unwanted tweets that we get sucked into. Before we know it, our digital lives are crowded and crazy. So, to help you out, here’s how I decluttered my digital footprint.
Email: Let’s face it – your email address is sold for marketing purposes. Sign up for one mailing list and get added to 10 others without your permission. It’s impossible to keep track of what mailing lists you really want to be apart of and which ones you never wanted. Well my friends, enter Unroll.Me. Unroll.Me will scan your email inbox and simply ask you what mailing lists you want to remove and unsubscribe to. It’s that easy! The mobile app is FANTASTIC! It has a swipe right/left feature just like Tinder to remove those unwanted emails.
Facebook: We love Facebook, but we don’t necessarily love all the pages, events, and groups we get signed up for. It’s all clutter. Block the once a month Facebook events, remove yourself from unnecessary groups and unlike the pages that have zero interaction with you (or vice versa).
Twitter: First – let’s address the elephant in the room – remove the easter egg avatars. It only takes a few seconds to setup a Twitter avatar. If your avatar is not setup, people assume it’s most likely a spam account. Also, unfollow those that have zero interaction with you or your brand. Plenty of tools are available to clean up your twitter following/followers lists like Tweepi. Unfollow those who have not tweeted in a few years or those spammy accounts.
Instagram: A platform primarily focused on pictures and videos is hard to easily determine which accounts are not valuable to you. Many times, when you first set up your account, the platform will automatically follow all your contacts. If your contact book is huge it might follow all those accounts with cats in them. I hate cats. Where are the dog accounts? Okay… I digress. My point being – figure out what really matters to you and unfollow anything that lacks true value. If you don’t love seeing the content, you’re wasting your time scrolling through feeds full of meaningless accounts.
What tools do you use to cleanup your digital footprint and make it smaller?