Nicole in D.C.

There are those moments in every writer’s life where you come across something (or many things) that you wish you’d written yourself. This article by Blair Enns about Social Media Sins is one of those things. Since he stole this idea from me before I even thought it (kidding), I’m going to do my own take on his top social media sins.

1. I’ve never used an RSS reader and I don’t see why I should.

I lived this way for a very long time. When you compile a e-newsletter every other week, you do need to be tapped into news. I do not, however, read the same blogs or resources when doing so for work and thus I don’t feel as though any one stream of information is constant in my reading. I appreciate the McLuhan reference and am positive Marshall is rolling around in his grave every time CNN uses Twitter to compile a news segment or ends a story with “Just Sayin’”. Where has responsible reporting gone?

2. I have read and benefited from many of the “rules” of social media, but the truth is they are just conventions.

This is one of the truest things I’ve read in a long time. I’m just starting out in my career and it happens to be in social media. While I expect this to take me far, I know that the popularity of social media is a fleeting movement that could die as quickly as it started. There are dozens of webinars, top ten guides (or anti-top-ten-guides), and resources out there, especially for nonprofits, on how to leverage social media to get what you want. They all attempt to establish rules and general guidelines for how you should steer your conversation. Everyone peddles them off as facts or tips of the trade, but really, they’re not secrets. Everyone knows these “rules” and either follows them or throws them to the wind every chance they get. No set of rules works for any two people establishing their web personas… much less for any two organizations.

The truth is, the people who’ve gotten lucky on social media are those who’ve worked the hardest. There’s no steadfast rule on anything in social media. I don’t mean that just anyone can “strike it rich” in social media either through a single viral video or a cross-platform campaign just because they work hard. But, there is some luck involved. You could do all the right things, follow all the right people, post all the right content, and wait around for followers. But sitting back and worrying about statistics and deliverables doesn’t put fresh content on the page… doesn’t keep you connected with your constituency… doesn’t keep you focused on your mission (ya know, that thing that got you started in social media in the first place).

3. I like that life, work, learning is now one big conversation, but sometimes I don’t want to converse

Today, while compiling news, I came across an article about aerial wolf hunting [WARNING: SCARY PICTURE BEHIND THE LINK!]. Normally, I don’t read the comments on articles on MNN because they skew toward my demographic, bleeding heart liberals who want to save the world, but something drew me to the comments. Below, someone commented about how liberals are hypocrites. We want to kill unborn babies, but we don’t want to kill wolves. We want to harbor illegal aliens, but we don’t want to kill wolves. (I think you get it)

I had that kneejerk reaction to comment – something I’ve never actually done on a blog – but something held me back. Instead of accepting that temptation to take the bait and join the conversation, I held my comments to my self and thought about how I actually felt about the issue. For instance, is it ethically possible to be both pro-choice and anti-animal violence? Could I be anti-wolf killing and pro-meat eating at the same time?

Instead of hashing those thoughts out to the world, where it could consume several minutes or hours of my time because I could debate those people for hours on end, it was more important to me to make sure I really understood how I felt about the issue aside from my kneejerk response. I wound up having a great conversation IRL (in real life for those of you not living in 1995 with Sandra Bullock in The Net) with two friends about these issues.

7. I think it’s okay to blog every day for a week, then not at all for a month – as long as you have something of meaning to say.

If you take what your mom told you when you were little (if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all) and apply it to social media… I think you have an appropriate content strategy. I completely agree with Blair on this. We live in a world where at least 6 separate channels I can think of broadcast “news” 24 hours a day; where MySpace and Facebook became too formal ad we needed to communicate in fewer characters with more limits; where a “medium” that involves sitting in front of your computer at 1:21 am on a work night is called social. The world does not need constant updates of everything you do.

Tailored content – either around your needs or your audiences needs – are far more effective than a steady stream of content. In the blogosphere, you don’t need to be the first one to have the article written. You just need to have the best content at the end of the day. Exclusives rarely, if ever, exist so accuracy and quality should rule over speed.

10. There’s going to be a backlash to all this full-time conversation.

Despite the fake news that Jeff Goldblum died, I don’t think we’ve seen the worst our 24 hour, constant stream of information will do to us as individuals and as a society. We’re currently seeing misinformation about the healthcare “discussion” being rapidly spread. There’s a new death panel, death book, or death match ready to deny seniors health care every few hours. With the media unwilling to report anything other than the fact that some one else said it… we’re in for a very long road ahead.

Finally, a little about the future of online reputation. A conversation with a former coworker led to some deep thought about what we’ll be willing to accept in a president when we’re in our 50s or 60s. By then, Facebook, Twitter and all the other ones (yes, they can be lumped in one category in my opinion) will be long gone, but the individual’s online reputation won’t. What will dominate headlines (if there are headlines then…):: “Senator has an affair with someone his own age!” or “Ancient Blurkn profile shows President doing kegstand while underage”?

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I don’t have a conclusion but would like to thank Blair for his excellent insight on social media that will make me rethink my own (even though he’ll never, ever find this blog… nor care to read this far).