LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter – Oh My!

I am part of the generation who came just BEFORE the Gen Y’s and Millenials, so the social media revolution was a bit of an adjustment for me initially.

I had some issues initially with the idea of interacting with people only through a device, instead of face-to-face, which was the predominant – the only other one was on the – gasp! – telephone!! – mode for my formative years. I managed to get the hang of email pretty well, and thought I was fairly accomplished with it. Well, after all by that time I was a communicator professionally, and written words were the tool of my trade, so I would HOPE I would be able to write a coherent, effective email!

But then as it tends to do, the world shifted on its axis, and my sister – my younger sister, I should point out – started urging me to create a page on this newfangled thing called “Facebook“. “Ugh!” I thought, “Why would I want anything to do with that?!” However, when my sister bribed me with: “You know if you joined, I could send you pictures of the girls more often.” By “the girls” she meant my two nieces, who are the sunshine of my life, and who, because they live about 4 hours away from where I live, I don’t get to see as often as I’d like. Darn! Once she said that, it was really just a matter of time before I created a Facebook page.

And, truthfully, I got hooked on Facebook pretty quickly and easily. Again, not that surprising, given that most of the communicators I know are very social and gregarious individuals, and Facebook is a pretty social application, making it very easy to connect with people you want to connect with. So again, I felt quite smug about being one of the first people in my social circle to have a Facebook page, which, admittedly includes lots of people who are NOT communicators, and therefore have no need to be on social media tools.

And then, along came “LinkedIn“. “Oh great! Here we go again, I thought.” Although because LinkedIn is designed to be a business-focused, professional social media site, it was a fair bit easier to understand, navigate and participate on for me. I was able to not only stay connected to current business partners and colleagues, but I could also re-connect with colleagues I’d lost touch with from past jobs. There are some definite advantages to the new online world! LinkedIn also lets me keep up-to-date with what’s going on in the professional lives of my contacts. I like knowing when somone’s gotten a new job or a promotion, or has completed a big project so I can send a message of congratulations! Those are the little things that help me truly stay connected with my contacts, and that I simply wasn’t able to do before LinkedIn came along.

So, another “new world” hurdle scaled successfully, and I was, once again feeling pleased with myself. Of course, given the speed the world’s been changing at, that feeling lasted about 20 minutes!

Because THEN, there was Twitter. Dum, dum, dum!

Oh, good GRIEF, Charlie Brown!! Twitter?! My initial reaction was: “You have GOT to be kidding me, right??” I mean, when I heard about the 140 character – characters, not even words!?! – limit, I thought: “Yeah, that’s not gonna work for me at all.”

I also had some difficulty understanding the point of Twitter at the beginning. I mean, how much interacting can you DO with only 140 characters???

But, ultimately, I felt like I had to get on there, because I AM a communicator, and Twitter IS a communication tool. It’s my job to be able to advise my employer about what communication tools are out there, and if/how we need to use those tools to advance the strategic objectives of our organization in the most effective ways. How can I do that if I haven’t even participated in all those tools?? Well, duh! I can’t.

So, grumbling and kvetching the whole way, off I went to create a Twitter page. I had a much harder time “getting” Twitter than any of the other social media tools. At first I just didn’t see the value in it. It appeared to be a random, often irrelevant – to me, anyway – list of comments. It seemed a lot like being at a party or networking event, where you wander from conversation to conversation, only getting snippets of discussions without actually getting anything out of any of them. I really didn’t enjoy Twitter in the beginning.

But, as time passed, and I asked some of my contacts from other parts of my world who were also on Twitter what they got out of it, and how I could get something more out of it, I finally started to dig a little deeper and find the value in the tool.

But, here’s the thing: I’ve realized, now that I’ve been on these social media sites for a while now that I use each of the three tools very differently. So, I thought I’d share how I approach each of these sites, and then, if you’d care to, I’d love to hear how YOU use these tools.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn tells you right on the”About” page that it “operates the world’s largest professional network”, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that I use it as a business and professional opportunity to connect. In fact, LinkedIn goes to great lengths to advise users to only connect with people they know, so that reinforces the intention of the site, and what it wants to be.

So on my LinkedIn profile, I’m the strictly business “me”. I post things about my job that I think might be of interest to my contacts, such as interesting or challenging communication projects I or my company are working on, or new communication resources or people who I’ve discovered that might be helpful to my fellow communicators. And, while I like to think that I use my sense of humour to enhance the information and updates I share here, I generally keep the goofy side of “me” off my LinkedIn page. I save that stuff for Facebook

Facebook
Perhaps it’s because of how and why I was introduced to Facebook – by my sister, bribing me with more frequent updates on my nieces, you’ll recall – or the fact that at the time I joined not many of my friends and family were on it, I made a decision early on that my Facebook page would be a private place where I could be completely myself, say whatever silly or opinionated things I wanted to, and post pictures I’ve taken of things I enjoy – like gardens or architecture of my visits home to see the family – that probably wouldn’t be appropriate, or, frankly, of much interest to the people I’m connected to on LinkedIn.

As a result of that decision, I’ve set everything on my Facebook page to “Friends Only”, which means the only way you can see anything about me or my page is to send me a friend request and have me accept it. And, unlike the majority of people on Facebook, I ONLY accept friends who really ARE my friends. People I actually know, and want to regularly interact with in a personally connected way. That means that I have a – to most people – horrifyingly small number of Facebook friends. A total of just 63 friends, in fact.

But I’m completely content with that, because it means that I can uninhibitedly be the goof that – truth be told – I sometimes AM in my personal life without having to worry about it offending someone, negatively affecting career prospects or affecting my professional relationships. Not because I think there’s anything wrong with the things I say or do. In fact, I believe strongly in respect as a basic human right and I try hard to give it to everyone I interact with, even when I go off on a political or social issue rant on Facebook. When I HAVE a strong opinion on something though, I feel I should be able to express it without having to worry about whether I’ll offend someone unintentionally. The people I’m connected with on Facebook know me [at least, I believe they do] so they know that while I have some hot button issues I feel and speak strongly about, I’m basically a pretty decent human being, who’s kind to children and animals, loves coffee and books, and is devoted to the point of idiocy to my sweet nieces. These people don’t get offended by my opinions, although they certainly will sometimes disagree and debate with me on those opinions, and that’s perfectly fine – because that’s what friends do! So for me, there’s a clear and firm line between “professional” me and “personal” me and it works for me.

Now, Shel Holtz, as those of you who are communicators already know, is an expert and highly respected authority on social media, has a different perspective on this. I read and subscribe to Shel’s blog, because he’s smart, and he has his finger on the pulse of all things social media so if you’re interested in the topic at all, you should be reading his stuff too! But Shel has said in many posts, including the recent: “There’s nobody here but me“, that “It’s impossible to separate your work life from your personal life.” And while I wouldn’t dream of contradicting Shel on anything related to social media, for me, having that separation works. It possibly works because I have such a small number of trusted friends, who are unlikely to “out” me by copying and pasting [which of course is possible] something silly I might post on Facebook in some other, more public place. Regardless of why it works, it works – again, let me stress: for me – and as long as it works I’ll keep that separation.

Twitter
And then there’s Twitter. For me, Twitter, and my use of it falls somewhere in between the approach I have to LinkedIn and Facebook. I definitely use Twitter to connect with and interact with business colleagues and people I already know, and who have intelligent, interesting and funny things to say – like Steve Crescenzo, Colleen Hawk, and Susan Cellura, all of whom helped me get a handle on Twitter in the early days. But, unlike LinkedIn, I can also follow people I didn’t necessarily know before but WANT TO! People I admire and respect – like Shel, Geoff Livingston, or Donna Papacosta. Plus, I’ve made new friends on Twitter – people who’ve either helped me get more out of Twitter, like Judy Gombita, or younger people who help me see the world from a different perspective, like Stephanie Johnson. I can even follow “famous” people [although I don’t do much of that] like the Dalai Lama! And just as a “by the by”, if the Dalai Lama’s on Twitter, well, that’s a good enough endorsement for ME to give it a whirl!

Aside from the variety of people I can interact with on Twitter, the very thing that made it seem overwhelming at first has become one of the things I most enjoy a year or so in – the constant flow of Tweets. Depending on the number and variety of people you follow, in any given hour you may see: news updates, links to other people’s blog posts, pictures of someone’s vacation or new baby, professional development events or news, book reviews, silly opinions on Lindsay Lohan’s latest peccadillo, or RT’s [re-tweets] of something YOU have tweeted that someone else found valuable enough to share with THEIR contacts [that’s VERY COOL when it happens!]. Once you get used to the continuous scroll of information [some people tweet a lot, others not so much] and learn to identify what Tweets are of interest to you and which ones are just today’s extraneous noise [because every day is different – today’s noise might be tomorrow’s critical info], you can find extremely helpful, interesting, enjoyable information on Twitter – and there’s a LOT of it!

The final thing that Twitter has given me is something every communicator can benefit from – I’ve gotten much better at editing myself! Because Twitter only gives you 140 characters to speak your piece, you HAVE to learn how to say what’s on your mind succinctly, clearly and in an engaging way within that limit – and if you want to include a link to something in your tweet, you have to keep your words even shorter! At first, I must confess that I found the limit very frustrating and I gave up on many tweets I wanted to send because I couldn’t say them in under 140 characters and still get my point across using English [I rarely use “texting slang”]. But with practice, and with seeing how other people managed to communicate effectively on Twitter, I got better at it. Now, I look at it as a challenge, and a way to keep my communication skills sharp, and current while still interacting in my own unique voice. I actually find I kind of like communicating in a totally different manner than the way I typically interact at work, i.e. emails, PowerPoint presentations, intranet articles, etc. Dare I say it? Twitter’s sort of fun!

Well, that’s how I use these social media sites. How about you? Do you have different ways to use these sites, or are they all the same in terms of what you do with them, how you benefit from their features, and who you connect with? I really would love to hear how others – especially other communicators – use these various tools. Please weigh in! Thanks.