Over the past weekend, I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways in which I communicate online, specifically on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. Generally I’d say that Facebook and Twitter are the two tools that I currently use the most, and I’d bet that most of you would probably say the same of yourselves. My personal blog comes next, fitting nicely into third place. But what I’ve been pondering isn’t which service I use more, but rather how I use them. How do I balance my business-centric relationships with my personal life? Where is that fine line drawn? Is it shifting?
Mark Juleen had a post on his blog this morning about a talk he’s been working on with Duncan Alney for an panel they have coming up next week. In it, he used the phrase “corporate mullet” (which he credited Duncan with creating) to describe the relationship that many businesses have with their customers. Essentially, his point was that too many businesses spend their time developing a “customer policy”(the business up front) that doesn’t necessarily reflect the internal company atmosphere/values(the party in the back), treating them as if they were separate entities. His argument, as I see it, is that your customer policy is better looked at as a conversation with your marketplace, fostered via engagement, and distributed across all parties involved. Essentially, the business and the party should be a moderate balance; one in the same. Of course, you should have a pre-existing strategy for engaging customers, but todays’ world offers so many forms of communication that to treat them separately seems disingenuous. It made me wonder, do many of us have “personal mullets” as well?
Historically, I’ve tended to use Facebook more for personal relationships, and Twitter more for business relationships. My blog falls squarely in between. However, as time goes on, the line between the two is blurring significantly - more of my friends are joining Twitter, and I’m now connected to many of my business contacts through Facebook. Ok, I can accept that. At this stage, my work is my life, so it seems natural for the two to eventually become one. Looking back on my recent tweets, blog posts, and Facebook feeds, I can see that I’ve started to weave personal interest stories into all of my daily updates without even realizing it. It’s almost as if my subconscious made the shift, even before I knew I was ready for it. But why?
A lot of information and opinions are shared through social networks, and that’s part of what makes them so great. We post links to interesting stories, we learn about new people through their literature, and we connect to brands through a shared impression of their identity. However, after awhile I began to realize that my patterns were becoming rather repetitive, focused around industry specific topics on Twitter & around “friendship” topics on Facebook, and quite frankly, I began to get a little bit bored with myself! Searching for inspiration, I looked carefully at the different blogs and individuals that I followed on a regular basis and asked myself - why do I find these people more interesting than others?
So what was the common thread?
The people I find most interesting all seamlessly blend business & personal topics within the framework of many other finds that, although not entirely relevant to their given profession, are thought provoking all the same. It was then that I decided to shift the way that I participated online(although that’s something I’m just realizing now).
Today, my conversations online are much more far reaching, and range from the multifamily industry, to music, to current events, and even on to art and traditional literature. This may be turning some people off - I still have relatively few followers on twitter, and I notice fluctuations on an almost daily basis. However, for those of you who actually do care to know what I’m up to, I hope that you enjoy some of what I have to say! I try to post videos and music that are interesting to me, find examples of articles that I think are relevant to the discussion, and share my opinions on topics without seeming as if I have the answer to all the worlds’ problems. This is where I see the connection back to Mark’s “corporate mullet” analogy - to do anything less than share who I am, as a whole - online and off, would eventually come across as disingenuous - and as we all know, that’s a police checkpoint on the road to failure.
Hopefully my approach helps you get to know me better - whether we’ve known each other for years, or never even met - because an individual’s interests and passions observed over a long period of time should tell you more about them than any cocktail hour or short form email ever could. And that’s what I’ve set out to accomplish, with this blog, with Twitter, and otherwise. Let me know how it works out! (haha)
How do you balance your own presence online? What do you think about my approach? It would be great to hear your thoughts. I’m having issues with Disqus comments right now, but @ me on twitter and we can discuss. Cheers!
