Commercial Social Media and Self Control

As Internet Marketing consultants, we spend a noticeable amount of time advising clients on how best ot use social media for marketing and branding purposes. Plenty of blog posts in our industry have documented the dangers of this–we virtually advise companies to let their employees build an online following in order to achieve a commerical goal; however, many companies let employees use personal accounts, tied to their personalities, avatars and non-commerical email addresses. If and when an employee and a business part ways, these social media accounts often leave with the individual. Bloggers involved in online marketing have covered this pretty well; however, there is another question  involved in social media brand building, and that is one of personal self control.

In a recent piece about the “outing” of the famous anonymous blogger Belle de Jour, Paul Carr at Techcrunch stated that “blogging is is, by nature, an egotistical activity”. In the past, Carr has also pontificated on how all forms of expression within social media, including activity on Facebook and Twitter, are egocentric activities. They are addictive, even to the less egocentric user. Once heavily involved in an online community which prompts a person to share details, photographs, opionions, etc, many people simply fall in love with the sound of their own fingernails tapping away on their keyboards.

For commercially-focused social media, this is dangerous. It takes a lot of self control to maintain professionalism in an online environment where personality-driven sharing is the norm, in-fighting is rampant and people are encouraged to be as open as possible. Combine this with the fact that simply blogging and tweeting about hard-line, corporate subjects ends up reading like a stream of press releases. Which doesn’t exactly invite readers and followers. If someone is to combine the benefits of social media usage with commercial success, they must be able to interact as humans without devolving into using their accounts to further their personal agendas.

It sounds simple enough, and yet people fail to keep their egos at bay when representing a brand all the time. Even when the brand is something close to the blogger or twitterer’s heart, it is important to keep a check on how your personality is influencing what you write and how you view the service. Is the service becoming an outlet for your own politics, posteuring or personal whims and fancies?

There is a balance to be struck between caring enough about the content you put online and caring to the extent that commercial ventures become infused with your personality. As an individual, it is not necessarily good for you to invest your entire life in an online sharing manner, such as Twitter. As a businessperson, you risk alienating an audience that sees your professionalism slip into egotism.