Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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December 19, 2008

How Can We Keep the Passionate Community Without the Risk?

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 7:25 am

I've been thinking . . .

about how we use social media tools.

Social media tools make it easy for experts to share experience and give an opinions. That leads to great discussions and becomes best practices of more than one industry. When social media tools connect thoughts and ideas of people innovating and building, they’re elegant and powerful things.

But when we about the social media behavior of a single company or individual, as we use the tools in passionate dialogue we can lose sight of how social media tools work. People say things they’d never say in person. We forget that our conversations are public and searchable — talking for our future children, future clients, and future selves. Our tweets are disoverable in a court of law. Words and questions that should move offline … often don’t. It’s dangerous.

The minute Twitter became a business tool, the game changed. A new personal / business balance was introduced.

If people who use the tools daily can lose sight of the lurkers and the asynchronous conversation, maybe companies who are slow to adopt “get” social media more than we think.

How can we keep the passionate community without the risk?

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7 Comments to “How Can We Keep the Passionate Community Without the Risk?”

  1. December 19th, 2008 at 8:33 am
    Richard Reeve said

    You raise an extremely valuable point here. One of the responses I heard at the New Marketing Summit was simply: blog smart. While our early experiences with chat rooms last decade might shape our practice private, the value of these tools for business is the move to the public marketplace.
    Know your boundaries.
    Speak to your subject areas.
    Be helpful.

  2. December 19th, 2008 at 8:42 am
    KatFrench said

    Interestingly, when I read “elegant and powerful things” I think of samurai swords.

    Among the most deadly weapons of their time, they were only allowed to be wielded by those who agreed to adhere to a strict code of conduct; the code of bushido.

    Most of the stuff in the bushido code wasn’t brain surgery–it was basic rules of decency and restraint that acted as a set of checks and balances for the power that samurai held.

    So maybe we need an equivalent bushido code for social media tools. Not a “terms and conditions” that you check off without really reading, but a real code of conduct, that is enforced by moderators.

    Back when message boards and blogs were it as far as “social media” was concerned, passionate communities were restrained by conscientious moderation. The communities that thrived were the ones where there was always a lifeguard at the pool.

    Who’s lifeguarding twitter? Who even could?

  3. December 19th, 2008 at 9:44 am
    SpaceAgeSage -- Lori said

    The community must develop standards by example, mentoring, and discussion. If bad behavior is rewarded, it goes on. If people opt for decency, it has a better chance of growing.
    Try to write, tweet, and blog to improve the world and risk might not be such an issue. We all have to make a stand. What seeds do we want to plant and nurture?

  4. December 19th, 2008 at 10:33 am
    Cath Lawson said

    Hi Liz - This is a good point. And even if we don’t think we’ve said anything wrong - it could be interpreted differently - especially when you only have 140 characters to use.

    I blog about bad companies every now and then. But I generally try to stick to ones that I’ve had a bad experience with.

    Other people have asked me to blog about businesses who have treated them badly. But I really try to avoid it, unless I’m certain they actually did what I’ve been told they did.

  5. December 19th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
    Mary@GoodlifeZen.com said

    What worries me is that nothing said in the social media can be deleted. That’s why I’m quite cautious about using social media.

    For me passion is connected to spontaneity, so I just can’t quite see how I can have truly passionate conversations in social media.

  6. December 22nd, 2008 at 10:29 am
    Me Time: Day 7 of 15 Days of New Years Resolutions | Jessica Knows said

    [...] How Can We Keep the Passionate Community Without the Risk? [...]

  7. December 22nd, 2008 at 11:22 am
    FreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » Five things your brand should ask about social media in 2009 said

    [...] How Can We Keep the Passionate Community Without the Risk? [...]

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