Blog

I’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with hav­ing a per­sonal blog and it got me think­ing about how I man­age var­i­ous aspects of my life online. Each  clearly rep­re­sents dif­fer­ent areas of my life but it got me think­ing about per­sonal brand­ing in this age of social media and dig­i­tal footprints.

With Twit­ter I made a proac­tive choice to just have one account and delete the ded­i­cated Bou­tique one. Like many peo­ple I use Twit­ter to learn, share and make con­nec­tions, per­sonal & pro­fes­sional. I’m aware my stream can verge on ran­dom & the intro­duc­tion of lists has made it absolutely appar­ent that I con­tribute dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple (fea­tur­ing in 50 lists so far rang­ing from dig­i­tal mar­keters to ‘moraletwits’). For me the mix has really worked.

As an inde­pen­dent con­sul­tant, per­haps I can blur the lines between per­sonal and pro­fes­sional more. The nature of the way I work closely with Direc­tors and their teams means it really helps if they like me. I’ve also cho­sen to focus on areas that gen­uinely inter­est and excite me so my work/play bound­aries aren’t as strict as in for­mer years. But I do think for the major­ity busi­ness is per­sonal and your com­mu­ni­ca­tions can and should show some per­son­al­ity and reflect the val­ues of the organisation.

N.B. That said, best avoid mix­ing busi­ness and plea­sure on the likes of Face­book. Unless your client was with you on the dance floor at 3am there’s no need for them to see that come Mon­day morning…

The ker­fuf­fle over the week­end with Stephen Fry threat­en­ing to leave Twit­ter made me think about behav­iour online.  As our national trea­sure Mr Fry him­self recog­nises, the ensu­ing cir­cus was out of all pro­por­tion but it did serve as a reminder…

1)      There are real peo­ple behind each user­name, whether famous or not, they have feelings.

2)      Don’t say any­thing online you wouldn’t be will­ing to say in person.

3)      Think before you com­ment. Is it nec­es­sary? Is it kind?

The beauty of social media is a shar­ing of knowl­edge and ideas. And, arguably, by putting your­self out there you are putting your­self up for poten­tial judge­ment. Not every­one will like what you’re doing or agree with all your ideas (how dull would that be?!) but let’s dis­cuss and be con­struc­tive. There is too much temp­ta­tion to jump on peo­ple and hide behind our screens. I pulled myself up ear­lier hav­ing com­mented on the Rooney’s choice of name for their baby; it tick­led me but I’d be mor­ti­fied if I thought they’d seen some of the com­ments and been hurt by it.

There’s lots of good too. I have seen so many instances of sup­port and gen­eros­ity on Twit­ter so know that net­works can be a great source of pos­i­tiv­ity. The longer I hang out the more I think that behav­iours and per­son­al­i­ties are ampli­fied online, for good or bad. Seth Godin says Twit­ter is High School; it’s an inter­est­ing point.