Is Social Media Making You Less Interesting?

People are asking for Personal Branding workshops a lot at the moment. And every time a request comes in, this image momentarily flies into mind:

sheep

I’ve puzzled why this demand is so current, and think it may be do with this idea from Mark Schaefer author of ‘The Tao of Twitter’.

‘The social web tends to amplify personal characteristics’.

We might add ‘reduce’ personal characteristics here too, as when we sign up for social networking, we fit content about ourselves into the architecture of the application: likes and dislikes on Facebook, short announcements on Twitter and what groups we join on Linked-In.

We are fitting definition of ourselves to a format and I suspect many of us are asking:

‘Online, how do I make who I am simpler but louder?’

And the aim of many of us will be to depict ourselves in as vivid and appealing a way to people we share common ground with – who can help us, or who we can help – and to reach as many of these folk as we can…

So to an extent we are impersonalizing ourselves, reducing ourselves to characteristics we hope others will recognize and like: being open, opinionated, warm and helpful maybe…

Now there is a denial of complexity here, which is usually present in television, and frequent during the news: ‘Whoa, here comes the President/Prime Minister giving us 3 minutes on the global banking crisis’

And when we reduce ourselves to what we think the outside world judges to be attractive, we can lose confidence about qualities we possess which are outside the norm. We won’t dare to mention that we are going deaf, have reached size 20 and don’t give a fig about hair removal.

Human = Interest

Which is why I urge any of you who like a provocative read to tackle You Are Not A Gadget by Jaron Landier, computer scientist. Profound and revelatory, it examines the links between the web and such qualities as humanism, empathy and the spiritual. A manifesto, it includes guidelines for staying human – and therefore, interesting – online.

These include :

-creating content online about yourself outside of what can be created through established social networking sites
-not posting anonymously… unless you really are in danger in doing so
-making videos and blog posts occasionally that take much longer to ferment, than digest
-avoiding the idea that you are the news. Your internal state may be much more interesting.

And finally, a quote from the start of the book:

‘You have to be somebody before you can share yourself’.

Somebody then – and not a sheep.

ps. Here a bit of sharing I’ve meant to do for ages: if you want just the exercises from Interview to Compel and Talk To Compel they are now housed here.

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Are you Soft Enough to be Creative?

Am needing to come up with a good idea fast here at the moment – and struggling.

It’s in a field I know little about, video-making, which is most of the problem. So straight after writing this, I’m back to the Read the full post »

Stealth Networking: 11 Tactics

‘I don’t do networking’ says my friend and sometime guru, Tony. ‘It’s always about sellers not buyers’.

This got me thinking. Tony is wise, shrewd and been Read the full post »

How Librarians Are Coming Out

philiplarkin
When I was an undergrad, our university librarian was poet Philip Larkin.

This made the library much more popular for Special Honours Drama, than it would have been otherwise.

We ran a weekly competition for greatest number of sightings of  the esteemed poet, between the shelves. As drama students we were mostly liars, Read the full post »

How Not To Get Hired As A Freelance

crowd

So…this arrived in the mailbox here this week:

‘We received 15 quotes in response to our advertisement, 14 of which offered proposals which more than adequately met our brief. I regret to advise that, on this occasion, your bid was not successful, regrettably it was Read the full post »

How Apps Make You Happy

Brain scientists are on a crusade to promote a crucial discovery: that your brain rewires itself throughout life and is characterized by what they call ‘plasticity’. Closely linked to this idea, is the notion that how you learn Read the full post »

Why Blogging Is Your No-Brainer

So, we meet in a cafe. You tell me you’re in education/media/business/coaching – a creative, maybe. I tell you I’m your fairy godmother. And I’m giving you your own free publishing company

With which you can

• chat with those you serve and serve them better
• prove your value Read the full post »

Happy New Oomph : Max Out Your Impact in 2012


Forget resolutions. An Oomph Project for yourself, where you plan for impact in 2012, is a much more fun way to swing into the New Year.

In ten days, I co-deliver a project helping people in a very specific context to up their global profile. Beefing up on this over the holidays, the Kindle’s just been brilliant at letting me leap Read the full post »

Must Reads for Learning Geeks


Is it just me or are too many pop psychology books bland and under-researched?

If you share this viewpoint – or indeed if you’re looking for a present for any sort of learning geek – then Read the full post »

3 Ways to Exploit Your Hidden Assets

invisible sign
Ever get the feeling that you have much more to offer, but can’t quite communicate this to people?

Inspired by a conference session last week, it occurred to me that many people I know – and some of you are regular visitors here – have hidden assets Read the full post »

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