You and I will never have the opportunity to get to know each other like our friends know us. We didn’t grow up in the same neighbourhood. We didn’t bond through four years of undergrad studies and “be-my-wingman-tonight” partying. Hell, we may never even meet face-to-face; were we to, you’d possibly find me much shorter than you’d envisioned.
You will only have so much time to give to me and my organization. I must be on-message – compelling and concise – because the clock’s ticking and the car’s running. First impressions count more than ever now, because everybody seems to operate in a perpetual ADD-like haze. That’s okay: I take no offence. I’m doing the same to you and your organization.
In considering a list of “best practices” in the online world, I realized that there’s still a good amount of wiggle room to present your brand as one that champions creativity and personality. I can save the “obvious” stuff for my friends. We’ve known each other so long that we need parlour tricks and circus acts to refresh the page. But professionally? Best-foot forward. Always.
Theories
1. Establishing an online presence. Take care to present your brand with consistency. Consider who, what, when, where, why and how. Draw up a bloody Gantt chart if you must. An effective strategy for promoting your personal brand, or that of your organization, will take planning and targeted thinking. Research the types of sites or applications your audience uses to reach you, and tailor your presence to reflect their needs and expectations.
2. Reputation and Brand Management. I joined my first mailing lists in the summer of 1997, and even then I tailored my attitude to the audience. Disgruntled and curt on one list, bubbly and supportive on another. Guess which approach netted more friends? Callow forays into behavioural analysis aside, the respectable professional must craft a game plan and adhere to it. Because first impressions count, personal, multi-level applications like Facebook and MySpace really should be culled to present the kind of person your employer or field expects you to be. These are personal promotion tools. Embarrassing material on your personal sites is like walking around with your fly undone, parts spilling out all over the place. What would your mother think?
3. Writer’s Creed: Commenting and Carping. As soon as you hit ‘send,’ you’re a published author. Your words (advocacy, beliefs, promises, recommendations) are a matter of public record, and you cannot expect to control where they land. That’s a little scary. Think for a moment about that picture of your bad side that got posted online last month. The moment you saw it you cringed, texted your buddy and asked for it to be taken down, and hoped that cute little so-and-so didn’t see it. Your words have the same effect in the workplace. Prepare your thoughts before you publish. Consider them for clarity, purpose and relevance. If you can’t find a suitable expression for your thoughts, or if someone’s already said it for you, don’t post. Don’t pile on. Don’t contribute to an already distressing signal-to-noise ratio of quality to quantity. Save your energy for the next time. You’ll get your chance tomorrow.
4. Test-drive unfamiliar applications. The sheer number of new social media applications is mind-boggling, and not every one of them is going to have a broad-based appeal along the lines of Facebook. I have already found online platforms like Ning and pbwiki to be useful for dynamic member-access document editing and sharing, but I’m less convinced that I’ll still be using Twitter in 2009 to send cellphone text-length bursts of information to colleagues. Your mileage may vary. So, for the interval between ‘first contact’ and ‘seasoned user,’ test-drive any new app. with a fake account. A popular approach among the cautious set, this allows the user to post comments or view layouts before pulling off the training wheels. The likelihood is that you’ll pass on more than a few apps while creating your online presence, and fake accounts will leave less of “you” hanging around the dusty corridors of neglected accounts.
Tools
5. Social Bookmarking. For the organization of important sites and articles. Del.icio.us (and similar utilities like Diigo) is a must-use utility for social bookmarking. Its strength is the facility to track your bookmarks from any computer. The social element comes from the option of tracking users (from within or even outside of, your network) who have bookmarked the same site, and digging into their list of tagged bookmarks for other sites that may interest you.
6. Blogging. In PR, writing is a must-have skill. Blogging has provided writers a forum for honing their talent in a public crucible. Blogs have a high degree of value in the workplace as well: they create a sense of community, encourage free discussion of issues, and in the corporate sphere, encourage employee participation.
7. Vlogging. A face and a voice is a compelling online presentation tool. And sites like BlipTV and seesmic are the new youtube. It’s an exciting new tool that can be used to great effectiveness by talented, creative commentators.
Tricks
8. Google Alerts. For monitoring your organization, your brand and your output. An easily created tool for the practitioner to create e-mail alerts that collate every mention of selected keywords. On a regulated basis (where one chooses the frequency of data delivery), the user can receive any mention of his organization, target group or area of interest.
9. RSS Feeds. Similar to Google alerts, RSS (“really simple syndication”) feeds facilitate the creation of a news feed that delivers online mentions to your virtual doorstep.
10. Amalgamation: Friend Feeds. When your social media network threatens to collapse under the sheer weight of account passwords, URLs and grammatically incorrect site names, find something that gathers them up into a tidy stream of information. Friend Feed is a little bewildering at first, but it’s a cool one-stop shop for connecting with your personal life at the end of the day, after you’ve earned your daily bread by being responsible, mature and mindful at work.
Rather than feel that I’ve been force-fed a series of Web 2.0 sites and applications, I’ve been encouraged at the volume, variety and creativity of choices laid out before us. There’s a definite cultural gap developing between those who “get it” and those who never will, but the new world wide web order is here to stay. Although we may not recognize the ever-shifting landscape were we to close our eyes for a month or two, “best practices” are like homilies from grandma: they’ll keep your head even when all around you are losing theirs.
