Personal Public Persona

Earlier this week I authored a piece about social media in potential hire profiling. The responses have been varied but one point has become certain:

Without your boss sitting on your lap at all times, the choices you make are your own!


This sentiment is not specific to social media but it may be the area in which it is most prevalent. Tony Bruno was suspended this week for his choices and many others have suffered an even worse fate. As Erica Albright stated, "the Internet is written in ink". So unavoidably true. Your company cannot police your every thought, your opinions may fall into the wrong inbox, and interpreting the mood of the written word is very difficult. We are not governed by the platform or the organization with which we are affiliated. We can only monitor ourselves. This is a massive responsibility!

I don't believe that Tony Bruno is a racist, he just got caught up in the moment. This week I saw that a person trying to help another revealed confidential mental health information about that person. The intention was good but the after effect served to further limit the person she was trying to help. I saw another post asking sorority women to disable their facebook pages during their recruitment period..? That's a super secret society.

I don't know about you but I'm not willing to give up that easily. I strongly believe that every company should be aligned with their core values (from CEO to Intern). The most prominent core value of any company is: TRUST! If you want a productive and empowered workforce...trust is essential. Everyone appreciates being given the club with the power to swing it as they wish. No one likes rules, restrictions and/or regulations (necessary as they may be).

This social media thing is not going away. In fact, more people communicate through facebook than email these days. We have an opportunity to use the power of our personal influence for good...why ignore it or attempt to regulate it. Like anything else, we learn from our mistakes in social media. We stop putting down others in blog chats, we stop voicing our opinions after 4 beers, and we refrain from jokes that may be conceived as bullying.

For the first time in my professional lifetime the villagers have more influence than the king. The voice of the people has never been stronger. Twitter is the voice of the NFL players union, blogs speak louder than the New York Times and Facebook has more citizens than most countries. We must understand that with great power comes great responsibility. We need to be aware that our words have consequences and that they cannot be erased. Accept the privilege and proceed with riotous intent!

It is certain that social media will improve our communication. We will learn what to say and when to say it. We will stop protecting our words and share them. We will grow, in honesty, together!

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave

The Last Rights of Social Media

I have spent nearly 3 years heavily involved in the practice of social media activism. I have learned one distinct lesson:
* Very little good comes from participating in online forums.

LinkedIn is a masterful tool, I benefit greatly from writing this blog, and I hope my involvement in Twitter brings inspiration to others...? 100% of the time that I have participated in a LinkedIn group discussion, Wiki open forum or a blog debrief; my thought intent has been taken out of context, co-horts have ganged up on others, personal opinion has overwhelmed healthy discussion, and cyber-bullying has been the end result.

In 2010, we saw people initiatives created to protect young people from one another in cyberspace...laws enacted to prevent cyber-bullying. Guess what, cyber-bullying is just as prevalent in HR forums lead by industry veterans.

There seems to be a strong case mounted for free speech on the internet. Unfortunately, freedom of common sense and/or the ability to promote thought (instead of deterring it) seems to be on hiatus.

There are those waiting at lap top to pounce on anyone brave enough to promote ideas (original or otherwise). There exists a group of so-called experts that promote unwritten standards for social media and elect themselves to police social media forums with only malicious intent in mind.

It's not working! LinkedIn groups have lost their focus; invaded by spammers, negative thought and assumed right of authority. One cannot blog a collection of personal ideas in an effort to empower others without having their positive intent torn down and ridiculed.

So here are my suggestions for Social Media interaction in 2011:
* Encourage Only Healthy Discussion
* Make It A One Way Street
* Stop Participating

Keep Fighting the Good Fight
I just saw a posting from a so called 'social media expert' filled with infantile ideas. I applauded her post while others sited case studies and their assumed standards to disparage her advice. She had the courage to write the article, she put herself in the game....those who sit on the sidelines with arms crossed have no right to pass judgement on the Quarterback.

If you are going to put yourself out there you have to channel opinions into facts or points of encouragement. You have to develop the ability to ignore opinion fueled detractors and empower those who recognize courage.

Post Once
Where social media forums dissolve is when two people bicker back and forth in front of thousands. Develop a strong entry and own it....you DO NOT have to defend your thought process!

Sunsetting Discussion
...or you may choose to give up on these forums all together...and I don't blame you if you do. If you have a job to do, a child to look after, or a team to coach; you cannot have your day derailed by the opinion of a nameless, faceless, avatar with only ill intent in mind.

So next time you see a post by a person that seems off base, think about 2 things:
1. Is this person's intent to empower others?
2. What will be the potential backlash to my comments?

Keep it positive, do not let your ego override logic and do not respond to people who are only interested in picking a fight!

You only get one reputation...OK, you get two(one online and the other 'real life' reputation). Either way, you would hate to be denied the Presidency for a comment you made 10 years prior.

Inform, Encourage and Be Strategic!

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave

Choose Your Voice

(the editorial on suicide prevention is featured below: 9-17-10 post)


There seem to be two certainties in life:
* Everything Written Can Be Misinterpreted
* Our Ability to Gain Insight from the Dissension of Others Drives our Success

We all want to be liked by everyone. To build a robust network of followers and receive LOL validation to the ideas we share. The questions that have to be asked are...
1. Who do I know?
2. What can I help them learn?

If you really want to get something out of this social media thing you have to make choices. You have to paint statements, stand by your work and accept input from others to more fully form your view. You cannot expect to tell 100,000 people (who have no relevance to your business process) things that they do not care about.

I have a few in-game suggestions:
* Post no more than 20 times a day
* Avoid telling us about your personal actions
* In-Put YOUR personality and Ideas

Brevity is King
It's pretty simple. If you are on Twitter and/or Facebook all day people are going to start wondering about your productivity. These tools can be a great escape and a driving force to our business prospecting. NO ONE wants to open their page and see your profile 18 times in a row.

Learn to consolidate your ideas. Know that you don't have to RT everything. Read more than you write.

Just left the bathroom..
...are you kidding me? No one cares if you are going to the store, we don't need to see a picture of your food and we do not care about hygiene activities.

I am the first to contend that the practice of 140 characters may make more concise communicators of us all so we need not Tweet our every personal action.

No One Cares!

Choose Your Voice
The great Chris Guillebeau made some excellent points in his recent blog. The premise being that your self expression will determine your network.

Think about it....why do you want 1,000 followers who sell social media e-books or are ladies of the night? Odds are the aforementioned folks are not decision makers in buying your products or services.

You need to establish a personal strategy that creates a system of advising and promoting your vision. Start helping people who really need what you can provide. You can make really meaningful connections online. You will compromise meaningful partnerships by being boring, uninformative or self serving.

Make new friends and keep the old. But do not be afraid to lose friends that don't help you challenge yourself and enhance your personal vision.

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave

If You Really Knew Me...

...you would know that I am Super Awesome!

Before this concept became a hit show on MTV, my friend Mike Robbins was work shopping it as a form of conflict resolution with some of the world's most prominent companies.

It always seems that our best intentions get misinterpreted...especially in Social Media forums. It seems without exception that every time I post on a blog or tweet something, emotions surface and the defenses go up.

So in today's blog post let's workshop a little conflict resolution by touching on some key points:
* Words are Just That
* Emotion is an Evil Mistress to Contrary Opinion
* Does it Really Matter?

Interpretation is in the eye of the beholder
Sometimes you see a blog post with which you agree. You voice an excited opinion and the author writes to the forum that you are attacking him/her...? What gives...?

Blogging is mostly based on opinion. We build our network of trusted advisers and reciprocate like minded verse. Because there is strength in numbers we tend to come to our friends defense when he/she has been embarrassed by someone. Social Media is not a popularity contest, as the golden rule goes, the more friends you have online the fewer you have in REAL LIFE! Be advised that there is an obligation to free speech that means reeling your friends in if they are off base. You don't HAVE TO agree with someone just because they are your friend online. You don't HAVE TO defend someone if you don't agree with them.

That's how this things work. Promote new thought and allow your detractors to help you consider all the angles.

Don't Be A Sissy!
No one likes to be told they are wrong. Just because your opinions are challenged doesn't mean they are wrong. Where we get ourselves in trouble is by ganging up on someone because they feel differently than we do. We are all entitled to our Thought Leadership, there is no right answer and if we ignore contrary thought we are defeating the purpose of participation.

Take the emotion out of it! You can be wrong and do not have to apologize to the world for it.

Stay Level Headed! Don't let emotion based defense mechanisms drive you to a self preservation campaign.

Take a Breath! Before you let your anger prompt a forever documented tirade...take a breath, soak it in, consider the rival opinion and grow from it.

It's Twitter People....
Come on, do you really care what a recruiter in Australia says about your Best Practices case study? You will probably not meet any of the people with whom you share a network, their thoughts may be taken out of context and they might live in their Mom's basement. The best way to protect your personal brand is to have thought promotion strategy that includes avoiding unnecessary bickering.

Just because one person disagrees with your thoughts doesn't mean that the other 32,000 do. The way to compromise your brand with everyone is to get defensive and get into a war of egos.

We live in an exciting time! We can now share ideas with billions of people in real time. We do not work with them directly so they are usually more candid in their communication.

Participate, Learn From Your Detractors and Grow Your Collaborative Strategy!

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave

Break the Mold

In an interview yesterday I was asked what was the best Tweet I ever saw.

Here it is:
@benjaminmccall - If I personally belived all statistics, then I wouldn't have accomplished anything! Break the mold.

Ben, like me, seems to be a guy who believes that convention is what got us in this mess in the first place. I am concerned that organizations are using this down time not to re-invent but to scale back. I am continually concerned that when things get better organizations will go back to the same old thing and hope it works this time.

In my consulting efforts I am always asked for 3 things:
References
Case Studies
Best Practices

People thirst for defendable statistics to take the guess work out of decision making. Essentially, "tell me what other companies are doing and we'll do that because if they decided it will work, it must".

If there is no where to go but up why not take a chance......if the other stuff didn't work why try it again....if everyone else is doing something and failing, does that make it right?...if Jack Welch jumped off a bridge.......(you get the idea)!

I know we're freaked out but FEAR will not move us forward, in fact, it will drag us back.

Be Bold, Be Couragious, Take a Chance.....Break the Mold!

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave

References:
http://twitter.com/davidkovacovich
www.linkedin.com/in/davidkovacovich