Social Media: I Can See Clearly How Blurry It Is!

It's all getting blurry... In the world of social media, our network(s) become our friends and our friends become our network(s). The business of social networking becomes the socializing of our business. It is increasingly difficult to separate who we are from what we do or whom we work for. After all, if you embrace the transparency that makes the web work so much better, it is nearly impossible to lead a double life online. We are who we are, and all of our Blog posts, Twitter Tweets, Facebook Updates, Utterz utters, Seesmic and YouTube Videos, Flickr photos and the entirety of our daily digital droppings shapes our persona in the eyes of "the community." The lines between personal and professional are dotted and not solid. This is not a bad thing. After all, we spend the majority of our adult lives working and our life's work experience invariably helps shape who we are and how we behave.

A SEPARATE PIECE?

It was not too long ago that I tried to keep my personal online presence separate from my professional online presence. While I did not hide the fact that I work at Myxer, when I did Myxer stuff online I felt I should keep it separate from this personal blog, and vice versa. Little by little, as I found my social network expanding I increasingly encountered people that, aside from being "social" with, I could actually be doing business with. I realized that there were potential partners in them thar social networking woods! So slowly but surely, I have eased a little more of my work life into my social networking and without question my social networking life has eased its way into my business. This has been encouraging, fun and productive on both sides of the fence as I continue to explore ways to appropriately use social media to expand my business, and at the same time leverage my business to expand my social network.

WORK'S A BEACH!

Most recently, I have been having a lot of fun creating short videos as part of my social networking. Whether posting them on Facebook, Utterz, Seesmic, YouTube, or my Social Networking Rehab parody blog, I have been finding video to be a great way to satisfy some of my creative urges. Along the same lines, the other day I took a short video on the beach with my Treo smartphone, and turned it into a silly "recruitment" video for Myxer, since we are actively hiring. On a whim, I posted the video on YouTube and sent the link out on my Twitter stream. Within minutes, in addition to some encouraging comments, I actually received resumes sent to the "HR" email address at the end of the video. A social media video, posted to the Twitter stream, proved to actually be an effective tool to attract potential employees. The lines may be blurred but the results are clear: Social Media and business can and do work together!

How have you incorporated your social media life into your business (or your business into your social media life)?

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Video by Sass. Photo Credit: GJS - Fotolia.com

You're So Vain (You Probably Think This Blog Is About You)

Variety may be the spice of life, but VANITY is the spice that seasons the blogosphere. Face it, you can't spell B L O G G E R without E G O! It takes a certain amount of self-love, self-confidence and self-centeredness to put your words out there for the world to see. Frankly, few of us would be doing it if we didn't have enough of an ego to believe our words, thoughts, creativity, opinions and observations were worthy of note by others. We want to be noticed, recognized (literally and figuratively) and we want to be heard.

Thanks to technology advances an individual's ability to create and distribute their own content has been democratized. It is the proverbial power of the pen and press on steroids. Whereas man has always been able to create with a scroll and ink or a canvas and paint, the audience was limited. Today, with the same ease we can create something that can literally have infinite global reach. Someone in Australia can read this right now, as simply as someone in the house next door (of course the person in the house next door is probably stealing my Wi-Fi signal. My Mate in Australia is a "legitimate" reader!)

THIS TIME ITS PERSONAL

We have entered the age of Personal Brands, where being master of your domain (name) is as important as your wardrobe and hygiene choices. Parents are choosing child names based on the availability of theirkid.com (and I used to think "GoDADDY" was an odd name for a Domain Registrar... Bob Parsons is a genius!) Contrary to popular belief, we are NOT what we eat. We ARE what shows up when we Google our names! Lifestreaming, Liveblogging, JustinTV, just in time to make an inordinate amount of content available using cool, free and easy tools.

Micro-blogging is making Macro changes to the what, where, why, when and how we communicate and share our opinions and our lives. In social media, everyone is like your first college roommate... a stranger whose life is suddenly exposed to you bit by bit as you spend more time together, sharing more and more tidbits of both the mundane and the meaningful. Over time, the bits (and in our case, bytes) of information shape your perception of the person and make them "real" and before long that stranger is no longer strange, and in fact, has become a friend. Is that any different than what happens on Twitter and Facebook? By the time you go to an event or a "Tweet Up" and meet someone you have been following or have befriended for a while, you are already virtual roommates and well on your way to becoming true friends.

TREES FALLING IN THE WOODS

Now that we have such a powerful and simple ability to reach an audience (and an audience is someone who is listening to YOU, whether it is one person or one thousand). If you write in a blog, Tweet something, or Utter something, or post a video on Seesmic or YouTube or Write on a Wall on Facebook and SOMEONE responds, then you have succeeded and your ego will have been stroked. But is Social Media like trees falling in the woods? If you post something on your blog and the comment meter remains on "0" does that mean nobody can hear it? How does that make you feel? Do you gauge your Twitter tweets by how many @yourname responses you get? Do you feel disappointed or even slighted if you craft a clever 140 character mini-manifesto and see it drift away with the current of the Twitter stream without making a single @you ripple? Honestly... I do! Thanks to our egos I think we all crave feedback. Perhaps even a negative comment is more satisfying than silence. Perhaps it is our ego driven nature that has unconsciously built the infrastructure of Social Media and on-line "community" around channels of linking, commenting, tracking, sharing and re-posting. What do you think?

So, now that we are "roommates," please feel free to stroke my ego by commenting on this blog post and sharing and linking to your heart's delight! And yes, this blog IS about you!

Photo Credit: Albo - Fotolia.com