The Muse: When my first book, The FabYOUList, was published, my publicists recommended that I become more active on social media in order to build buzz and grow my audience. Never one to do things halfway, I quickly turned my personal Facebook page into a “Public Figure” page and signed up for Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Google+.
5 comments:
Although I understand the possible convenience of wanting to network on social media, I feel like it is still a method that should be used with more caution than networking face to face or even through email by a mutual friend. For example, under OK: Engaging then Asking the author suggests that it is ok for you to ask someone to meet up after liking or commenting on posts a few times. While this method may make sense with a person you worked with five years ago, it may not be desirable to a friend of a friend. It seems to me that social media is more effective in maintaining relationships rather than making new ones even in this new age of networking.
Being in a school and a program that tells us networking is key and gives us a lot of opportunities to network this is one of the most useful articles I have read. Seeing as so many people that we have the option to connect with are not in this area learning some rules of proper online connecting seems key. There are some guidelines before though that are not mentioned that seem like they should be in there. Like Carolyn mentioned randomly adding someone on Facebook that you have no previous connection seems like maybe starting on the wrong foot. having a common friend that introduces you or reaches out to both parties before meeting would be a good place o start.
This article resonated with me a lot because I have been helping my mother with this stuff all summer. Having grown up in a social world I am not used to having to explain to someone what the purpose of a "Like" is or when it is appropriate to "Retweet" someone. I will be sending this article to my mom to help her understand a bit more about social networking as a marketing tool.
I cannot believe that people still fail to make such odd and blatant blunders on social media. I am very serious about keeping things off of my facebook page that don’t need to be shared with the world. That being said, it’s okay to keep the funny and kind of personal stuff if you’re comfortable with that because that’s part of how people get to know you these days, or it can be. Our culture is in a very interesting time where the lines between what is and isn’t okay among these types of social media are very odd and indistinct. Part of this is mostly because what someone doesn’t apply to social ethics in their real life, they probably won’t apply on the internet. But if they are still having a hard time with the ‘rules’ it is also in part because nobody has ever had to set these rules before. There is no right way of doing this...although some ways are certainly better than others.
I am conflicted on how I feel about networking over social media. I agree with Carolyn that social media, in general, should be used more for keeping in touch with people you already have some sort of relationship with rather than forming the relationship over the social media. As people who work in an industry aimed at live human interaction, it seems that we would want to interact with each other in person rather than over the internet. I do not think it would be appropriate to reach out to someone over social media even after "liking" or retweeting their statuses and tweets. Social media is meant to be social, not professional. Perhaps with the exception of LinkedIn, I believe social media should not include any sort of networking unless a more personal relationship has already been established for some time.
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