I would assert that the level to which personal information and random thoughts are included in your Voice is directly proportional to the level of professionalism you want your Voice to have.
If you have 10,000 followers, do you really think they care if you're on the way to the gym? If you have 10 followers and 5 of them are friends of your From the gym, then by all means. The first couple of times, business associates may think, "Oh I get it- he's on the way to the gym. He's active, balancing business with pleasure... Cool." But after a short period of time, it's gonna be painful to follow that guy on Twitter on your phone if it keeps buzzing at work about some nonsense or another.
I have a lot of respect for all of those who have been expressing their opinions about this topic of late. I predict that this issue will not go away anytime soon. What I do think will happen is that Linkedin, Digg, Twitter, Facebook, and (shutter) Myspace will each grab their niche in the Social Media World based on the level of "access" they allow each of their users and based on the usefulness each user finds from it.
Right now, I think the two biggest social networks where people haven't figured this out yet are Facebook and Twitter. Pretty clear Linked in is business only and I don't know many using MySpace professionally. There is likely to be the same "kind" of transition as e-mail (sort of). It's like there will become a "business" persona and a "personal" persona. I've been calling this the "genre of you" Everyone needs to find there voice. I feel like right now we're in a transition phase- people will tolerate "some" personal quirkiness, but the ratio will begin to diminish as more and more people grow weary of reading about which restaurant someone is going to tonight and want to get down to business.
Facebook is encouraging the transition with their "pages" concept- allowing businesses to register a corporate profile and adding more functionality. I'm more likely to follow my friends "socially" in Facebook, and follow news and business topics in Twitter. At least that's my hunch for now.
If you have 10,000 followers, do you really think they care if you're on the way to the gym? If you have 10 followers and 5 of them are friends of your From the gym, then by all means. The first couple of times, business associates may think, "Oh I get it- he's on the way to the gym. He's active, balancing business with pleasure... Cool." But after a short period of time, it's gonna be painful to follow that guy on Twitter on your phone if it keeps buzzing at work about some nonsense or another.
I have a lot of respect for all of those who have been expressing their opinions about this topic of late. I predict that this issue will not go away anytime soon. What I do think will happen is that Linkedin, Digg, Twitter, Facebook, and (shutter) Myspace will each grab their niche in the Social Media World based on the level of "access" they allow each of their users and based on the usefulness each user finds from it.
Right now, I think the two biggest social networks where people haven't figured this out yet are Facebook and Twitter. Pretty clear Linked in is business only and I don't know many using MySpace professionally. There is likely to be the same "kind" of transition as e-mail (sort of). It's like there will become a "business" persona and a "personal" persona. I've been calling this the "genre of you" Everyone needs to find there voice. I feel like right now we're in a transition phase- people will tolerate "some" personal quirkiness, but the ratio will begin to diminish as more and more people grow weary of reading about which restaurant someone is going to tonight and want to get down to business.
Facebook is encouraging the transition with their "pages" concept- allowing businesses to register a corporate profile and adding more functionality. I'm more likely to follow my friends "socially" in Facebook, and follow news and business topics in Twitter. At least that's my hunch for now.
Hi Dennis. Good post. I agree, except that while Facebook is encouraging the transition with the "pages" concept, they should also allow you to interact one-on-one with your fans from your page rather than from your personal account. That has been most frustrating for me to navigate. The only solution at this point is to create a personal account and page for the same organization/business/entity. Thoughts?
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