WhatsTheBuzzAbout.com

Does Your Online Behavior Mimic Your In Person Behavior?

Many people physically attend networking events in their cities. It is not unusual to notice that groups of people who know each other are standing in the same group or sitting at the same table. Often you can observe individuals who are alone and who are either awkwardly holding a glass of water or pretending to be looking for someone. Perhaps they are shy or perhaps they are egotistical and believe that others should seek them.  Regardless, these people have missed the point of the network event.   They are on the sidelines. Though observing what is happening, they are missing opportunities to expand their networks and develop new personal and business relationships.

Other individuals mingle, moving from group to group proactively introducing themselves and perhaps sharing surface pleasantries or having more in-depth conversations. Regardless, those people are making in-roads in developing new relationships. These people are participators and contributors.  

When we move to the online world, we find the same behavior. We have individuals who actively participate in groups and forums, again either sharing surface pleasantries or having more in-depth discussions. We also find the sideliners/observers– those who stay on the fringes of conversation, either rarely contributing or not contributing at all. Sometimes, these individuals who rarely if at all participate will call their behavior “stealth” as though behaving in that manner is some sort of strategy.  Regrettably, these stealth individuals are also missing opportunities to expand their networks and to brand themselves.

Are you a participator/contributor or are you a sideliner/observer? 

Participators contribute to dialogues in person or online. Sideliners observe and rarely contribute. Perhaps in some situations it is appropriate to be a participator and in others a sideliner. Rarely, will you find an individual who is a participator in person and a sideliner online or vice versa.

If you are a participator, you are planting seeds that will result in building new relationships long term and perhaps new business opportunities. If you are a sideliner, you can expect to have less business and social opportunities because your branding is weakened by your lack of visibility.

If you are going to be authentic in your online presence, then you need to be true to the manner in which you act and participate as well. You need to determine whether you are satisfied with your in person and your online persona. If you are a participator, do you show appropriate restraint and deference to others when needed? If you are a sideliner, do you participate only when pressured?

Ask yourself — what is your in person and online modis operandi and is it working for you? If you are dissatisfied with the results, simply make the decision to change and then change.  It really is just that simple.

 What is your buzz about?

Are You Online Authentic?

As humans we are complex beings. We have been taught from a young age that it is acceptable to act differently in different settings.

As children in a restaurant or in a formalized worship setting, we were to be quiet, stay in our seat, and be respectful. However, on the playground, we were allowed to run and scream and laugh and push our friends down the sliding board. It was simple then, either we were allowed to be children in a situation or we were expected to be little adults in a situation. Our parents or adults told us how to act.

As teen-agers, we learned about authority and expectations from the adults in our lives—parents, teachers, coaches, mentors, etc. We learned to decide for ourselves how we were going to act in each setting. We decided if we were going to do our homework, abide curfews set by our parents, share personal information with certain adults even if they did not ask to know, join gangs, volunteer to help clean-up a river, etc.  We began to understand that we can create unique personalities which we can put on at off at will. Expectations of us from parents were different than those of us from brothers or sisters, or teachers, or peers. We learned that one person could be happy while another could be disappointed for the same action we took. As we grew, our choices grew.

In the adult physical world, we learned new roles as employers or employees, spouses, parents, mentors, leaders, etc. We learned to vary our conduct from the manner in which we conduct ourselves at work to the manner in which we conduct ourselves at home or in other social areas of our lives. In the physical world, conduct may be is easier to observe and to commend or criticize by multiple segments.  We do not normally pert chart our home life and we do not normally answer the phone at the office, raise our voice, and call for XYZ to pick up the phone as some of us might do at home. 

Enter the social media world and its ever-increasing melding/blending of personal and private information. Some of us entered the social media world from the personal vantage point; we may have opened YouTube to share videos, for example.  Some of us may have entered the social media world from a professional vantage point; we may have joined LinkedIn™ to be able to reach other professionals.  Do you remember your first foray into the social media space?

What we include in our profiles, post on groups or blogs, and what we join or with whom we connect in social media all defines us in the electronic world.  We may have had this impression that we could maintain separate roles on social media sites and it may have been true for the early years of social media. For example, we could have joined MySpace or Facebook for personal use and Ecademy or Xing for professional use. Our posting and participation could be limited in each. Now, the evolution of software programs enables us to marry content in many respects.  Even if we do not choose to do so, others may publish some of our content on other platforms.

We may have multiple business hats as well. Some of us appear to be finding it difficult to reflect our authentic self and be in concert with what we are supposed to represent from a business point of view. We may choose to be silent if we disagree with a post in order not to have a public disagreement which might reflect poorly on our business, or worse, be in conflict with someone else with whom we have a business relationship. Perhaps, we have several online businesses and we have chosen to be concerned about which business we represent with each public posting.

Confusion is the result of a lack of authenticity. A lack of authenticity stems from our choice to feign to be something that we are not.  Everything we enter in the social media space is perceived as us – everything we say or write should represent who we are as an individual. If that is not in concert with the business side of things, then do not say or write it…same difference as not running around in a restaurant as children.  In this case, we have to control ourselves.  If we have trouble juggling our multiple hats, we need to put one of the hats aside.

Our business and personal lives are being inextricably linked in social media. We need to consider who we are and let all of our social media data reflect those parts of us which we are willing to share with the world. Those parts that we want to maintain as private should not be put out there in cyberspace. Be authentic. It is much easier to be real than to try to be something you are not. You drive your online persona – not your employer, not your friends, not your colleague – you. You are in charge of your electronic presence.

 What is your buzz about?

How Open Are You to Connecting?

Most likely you have received invitations to connect on various platforms and groups from individuals whom you have never met, either virtually or in person.  Making the decision to connect or not connect is easy for some, raises questions for others, and even angers some.

Are you an easy connector?

An easy connector is someone who accepts most connections, is not finicky about whether standard language is used, does not really care for the most part about how the requesting person found them, and does not usually check the requestor’s bio out before connecting.

If you are an easy connector, you probably believe that something good will eventually come out of connecting, whether for you personally or someone you know or will come to know.  You also understand that it is easy to disconnect—the quick fix if needed.  You may not care about the language someone uses to offer to connect with you because, most likely, you have used standard language yourself to save time, even to connect with people you know. You may assume that if someone wants to connect with you, he or she must have a good reason. You know that the more people with whom you connect the more people you can find more easily and the more people can find you more easily. Perhaps that is a fundamental key for your business success.

As an easy connector – you are all about the future possibilities—short and long term, about planting a seed, and about assuming that those reaching out to you whom you do not know also share that vision.

Are you a studied connector?

You are a studied connector if you take time to decide whether to connect or not and limit your connections.

You may be an individual who “carefully considers” each request to connect, might check out the requestor, and may think about how this connection could be leveraged either now or in the future.  You may weigh this connection to consider factors such as the wording of the request,  did they take time to learn about you, does the connection bring credibility to you, have you interacted with this individual in past, or is the connection recommended by someone you know.  On the other hand, you may not take time to reach out to the requestor who did not give an explanation to find out why he or she wanted to connect with you before you make a decision.

You might be an individual who wants to network on a regular basis with your connections, wants to have a close business relationship with them, and is comfortable with a smaller group of connections to manage and leverage. You understand that you can only remember so many names and you want to be able to work the relationship with each of your connections individually.

Do you get miffed when others reach out to you and have not fulfilled the conditions you may have established in a profile, such as requesting that people do not use standard language to request connection, tell you why you should connect, give you contact information in the request, etc.? Do you shake your head at open or easy networkers and think that they are making a big mistake?

As a studied connector, you are all about developing solid, tangible relationships. You are about what the person brings to the party and you look for more immediate returns on the connection.

Is it better to be an easy or a studied connector?

There is nothing wrong with taking either approach. Individuals have the right to establish the conditions under which they connect. Easy or studied—no matter. What is important is that you connect and are comfortable in that connection.  What works for you is the right thing for you. It does not matter what anyone else thinks about your decisions regarding connection. Do what you think is the right thing, trust your judgment, and let your connections be worker bees for you and you a worker bee for them. You are the leader of your connection hive.

What is your buzz about?

Do You Respect Your Readers?

Every day it seems that there are reasons someone could choose to take offense on social media sites. People can post perceived offensive language or offensive topics, stir up arguments, or monopolize conversations. It seems that any of these are examples of disrespect of readers or group participants.

Is the use of profanity respectful?

There is one very well-known aggregator of social media which chose just recently to use a word which is commonly considered profane in the subject line and body of a post by a moderator. The word is not one which most parents would be pleased to hear their child or teenager express and usually implies that a least one person is somehow related to a member of the animal kingdom.  It seemed a little unusual for a professional site to use such a term.

Certainly the person to which that term referred can be expected to potentially take offense, as can others with linguistic sensitivities. It seems only a matter of time before the spoken word of that ilk that we often hear in news, films, recordings, and television broadcasts might be common in the written professional word. However, is that something that those of us who blog, read, publish, or correspond really want to promote?

Is posting an idea or topic which could be construed as offensive respectful?

Someone offered a product for sale yesterday in the amount of $9.11 on a particular group. Some individuals are particularly sensitive to the date of September 11; i.e. 911 as you might understand if you followed the events in the United States. Let us assume for this purpose that the posting of an item for sale was acceptable on that forum or group. Should that individual have offered that item at that sale price on that day?  What if a percentage of sales was targeted for survivors—does that change your opinion? Was that tasteful or appropriate? Was it respectful to others? Should people be precluded from bidding that amount on one of the auction forums? Should people be precluded from discussion about whether the news reports have been trustworthy in their reporting of the 911 events? What about the concept of free speech?

In this case, the individual might have understood the significance of that number and chose to market a product using that well- known number as a dollar amount , but it is possible that others might not. It seems that a short note from the moderator off-line to the poster could have handled the matter and had a good conclusion. Should the moderator intercede at all to protect those with thin skins? But, stay tuned below:

Is continuing an argumentative thread for a whole day respectful?

A conversation erupted from that single post about the sale amount and the veracity of the news reports surrounding the event and evolved into a series of postings with attacking personal language and continuous restatement of previous positions and arguments? We may decide to sit on the sidelines and just not contribute to a heated discussion. Even if you agreed with one or the other individuals, did you just wish that they would stop and turn off his or her computer? What if one of the people in this endless cycle was a moderator of the group?  What happened to the gentlemanly way of agreeing to disagree and ending it after a post or two? Did you ever wish that you could somehow just carve a particular thread out of what gets blasted to you?

We have all experienced continuous threads that seem to have their own life spans. Sometimes, it seems that someone just has to win—just has to be right—just has to have the last word—just have to have the last bragging or argument rights. Would it be wonderful if on these groups, we could have an immediate poll and vote on whether to let a thread continue to flourish on the group?

When we post, we should be cognizant of the power of our words and the effect that those words may have on others. Be judicious, clear, and concise in posting with an effort to present material in a way to mitigate some of the claims of offensive material. Don’t monopolize group postings or be repetitive. Treat others with the respect you want and expect reciprocity.  Step up to the plate and be the role model.

What is your buzz about?

How Vulnerable is Your Conversation History?

Have you ever given thought as to how you engage in written virtual conversations with your business associates, colleagues, personal friends, new acquaintances, potential or current clients, employees, people you don’t know, people whom you may not even be aware are reading what you write, or family? We take great care in forming our spoken words in meetings or in one-to-one engagements, for example. We do that in spite of the fact that usually there is no record of those words for others or the respective parties to hear a second time.

Whether you have made a conscious decision or not, your words may be electronically recorded with no known designated destruction date.  Even a decision to delete something you have written is no guarantee that it cannot be retrieved by you or others through computer forensics or other means. Of course, if the transmission went to others the decision is in their hands and not yours.

The significant issue is how you chose to communicate, i.e., what form of technology you use or guide others to use to reach you. What do you do with the historical record of that communication? It may be insignificant that you misspelled a word or have a grammatical error in the grand scheme of things. It may not be important to you whether someone was offended by what you said. You may never know if someone took some negative or positive action as a result of what you wrote.

However, how you choose to communicate has significance. You are still accountable for what you say but the longevity of it and access to it is something you can partially control. If you have ever belonged to a social network which discontinued operations you know that you can no longer access any internal communications you had within that platform. If you change email or internet service providers, you may lose access to your email history.   

If you use instant messaging, that record generally must be manually transferred to any CRM system if you need to record it. Some individuals deliberately use a service such as Skype to communicate business deals, set their preferences to delete all history, and reach agreement with those with whom they communicate to do likewise. This results in the record of any communication appearing to be expunged every time both log off and then log on again. It is a wonderful feature, but it also plays into those individuals with less than noble intentions.   

Some people just seem to relish the ease of communicating on a particular platform. For individuals who are on many platforms, the need to log on to check mail is daunting and another time-waster. Notices that you have mail on some platforms still require log on to clean out the mail. Have you ever had written conversations going with the same person on multiple fronts? Have you ever experienced someone sending you a direct email to tell you that he or she sent you an email on XYZ platform? Do you ever want to say “Enough?”

You should decide whether you care if you discover one day that your mail on a social network is no longer available. Make your decision about which technology you wish to employ for your various written communications. Your electronic written communications could be vulnerable—could be accessible long term. Weigh your privacy with the need for historical records. Make a decision which form creates the easiest and safest way for you to manage electronic communications with different parties. Simplify your life. People will adjust, and you will have a more efficient way to communicate which will fit your style and needs.  

What is your buzz about?

When to Join or Leave a Group

We seem to be bombarded with invitations to join social media web sites, social media networks, and various groups. It is very easy to look at the description, or perhaps just the title of a group which someone sent to you or is on a web site, and make a quick decision that a particular group peaks your interest. You decide to click and join. Then what? 

Sometimes, someone whom you respect asks you to join a group. The invitation could be a standardized language invitation generated as a result of that individual’s contacts being loaded and compared to current group members.  Alternatively, the invitation could be individualized or at least given the appearance of being individualized.  Does that matter to you?  Do you join because the individual inviting you is a business associate, a client, a colleague, or a friend? Do you join just so your name shows up in the members? Do you join planning to be stealth or planning to participate?

One of the large social media networks has recently chosen to limit group participation to fifty– a relatively small number in comparison to other platforms.  It has limited group ownership to ten. These actions have caused many individuals to recast their group participation on that platform. Individuals now have to proactively consider which groups to join and which to leave in order to hit the platform operator’s pre-determined magic number.  

You may find the following exercise helpful in getting and maintaining a handle on your groups.  Create a spreadsheet and list the platforms you are on. List the groups on that platform that you are on. List the web site link to each platform and to each group. List the web site email post address if there is one. Then step back, and look at your list.  Perhaps some of them are designed to be passive. However, most are designed to facilitate conversations. Are there more than one hundred?  Maintain the sheet and you will be amazed as the list grows. You will start to see a pattern, a pattern of platforms which are actively growing, groups which are actively growing, moderators who are active, and participants who are active. This little worksheet will give you a window into your preferences and your affiliations.

Joining a group is optional, assuming that you meet the criteria for group membership.  Usually, pro-active participation is also optional. Leaving is not so easy because may group owners will follow-up asking you the ‘why’ question.  Replying back to them in an inoffensive way is that his or her group is no longer as significant to you as before might be a little difficult for you to articulate.  

Take control of your group life. Decide which groups are truly interesting to you and to which you want to participate and maintain your association. Decide which groups are not significant to you and leave those groups to those individuals who have the interest in them.

If you do choose to control your group life, you will find that your responsibility burden will lift and you will become more energized to participate in the remaining groups or new groups that are in your interest area. Buzz those groups often and enjoy the positive aspects of being in groups that are the right fit for you.

What is your buzz about?