To Behance Network Members:
Getting too many messages in your Behance inbox?
Frustrated by too many communications about people posting new projects?
The Good News: The Behance Network is serving as a valuable platform for creative professionals to showcase their work, exchange feedback, and build their careers. The feedback has been extraordinary, and many of the largest agencies and companies now use Behance as their primary recruiting source.
The Bad News: People are getting connection-finger (like trigger finger, but for network building) by joining too many inner circles. As a consequence, members start receiving too many messages...it can get overwhelming!
But communications is completely in your control. You decide who to connect to and how to communicate. Here are the common mistakes made by Behance Network members - and some possible solutions...
Mistake #1: You Made Your Inner Circle Too Big
New members to the Behance Network invite many people to join their inner circles. By doing this, you are signing yourself up to get messages from every member that you connect with. If you have 500 people in your inner circle, you will start getting LOTS of messages (and it will start to feel like spam!).
Solution: Keep your inner circle SMALL. Reduce it to JUST people you know or REALLY respect. People that you WANT to receive messages from. If you like someone's work, just add them to your watchlist INSTEAD of inviting them to your inner circle.
Mistake #2: Sending A Message Every Time You Post A New Project
When you post a project, everyone that is in your inner circle (and those that are watching you) ALREADY SEE your new project. They are notified based on their notification preferences and their activity feed.
Solution: Don't send messages about new projects. Use your communications wisely!
AND...If you start receiving too many messages from someone in your inner circle, just click "remove" at the bottom of the message. Just as you would on Twitter or elsewhere...
The Future of Communications in the Behance Network
We are developing new ways for users to manage communications. Stay tuned...
Needless to say, it is critical that the messaging features support the careers and productivity of members. We welcome your suggestions and feedback as we work to improve the Network.
Behance Team
Read intructions before using.
I am very happy to appreciate you for your informative blog. I thank you for the excellent tutorial, which is like magic, I think I learned a lot!
it would be much better if messages are displayed in the email (like in some social networks), so you can choose whether to open it now, or wait till there are a few more similar and check them at once.
now i know the idea is to visit more often the site and participate in the community thing, it's just an opinion :)
This could be a great improvement.
Please know that I write this with the best intentions, I love Behance, and when I first got an account I didn't really check it often, but as I discover the great quality of work displayed here, it has become one of my "go to" places for new inspiration.
It's clear that the "circle" and "follow" concepts are misunderstood by the majority of users, and there is also the chance that most users don't want to say no to someone that is making the effort to reach out and ask you to be a connection, plus the more participants on your "circle" the more exposed you get to other artists, so I'm not sure if making your circle smaller is a good idea, so here are 2 options I though might work.
1) What if there is a way to keep people on your "circle" but you only get messages from people you "follow"?
2) Maybe just receive messages from your "top 9"
I hope these help somehow!
I get the impression that while people may not invite many to their inner circle, they don't want to reject invites when they recieve them.
http://www.behance.net/?category=people