You’re sitting at your computer staring at Twitter, and you’re thinking, “Hmm. I can count the responses on my @ page with half a hand. I don’t even need all five of my fingers for this.” You’re trying to figure out what the problem is. You’ve read everything out there about how to tweet. You’re keeping your tweets to 120 characters so that there’s room for people to retweet you. You’re posting links to interesting articles. You’re trying to talk to people. But it just doesn’t seem to be working. So you decide that it must be your persona, or your user handle, or some combination of the two, that’s holding you back. You’re going to start again, and this time you’ll keep a certain tonality through all of your tweets. You’ll update your avatar to really seal the deal!
You, my friend, are on the way to a serious ailment called Social Media Multiple Personality Disorder, or SMMPD.
I’m not just blogging about SMMPD, I’m also a survivor
You are not alone in heroically fighting this acronym of an ailment. I’ve had about as bad a case as doctors have ever seen. Over the last year, I’ve had:
4 different Twitter handles
3 different blog sites & URLs
2 different Facebook accounts
And I’m not even going to talk about my partridge in a pear tree.
This is serious, folks.
Now the nice thing about SMMPD is that it is a very preventable burden. You just need to put in a little time.
Start before you start
Do you remember the big 80s anti-drug war call, “Stop before you start?” If you’re too young to remember that, please don’t tell me. Anyway, to avoid Social Media Multiple Personality Disorder, you actually need to start before you start.
Start what, you might well ask, as well you should.
You need to start thinking about what exactly you’re going to be doing. You need to have a game plan. You need to have some X’s and O’s laid out.
I know, this can be a real buzz kill. You’re ready to jump on the Twitter and blogging bandwagon, right? But hey, look what happened to me. Do you want to admit, one year from now, that you went through 4 different Twitter handles? I would think not.
So, let’s talk about things you can plan in advance. These are things I really wish I would have thought about at least a little bit before signing into Twitter hastily during a lunch break (true story).
What are you hoping to achieve? When I started that first Twitter account, I had the very loosy goosy, not 100% honest objective of “seeing what Twitter was about so that we could discuss it with our clients.” That was part of my goal, but that’s not really something to shoot for. As a result, my tweets were scattered, not very personal, and probably were kind of boring. My blog? I had less of a plan for that. What do you really want out of Twitter? Or if you’re tweeting for business, maybe the better question to ask is what actually need from Twitter. What do you want your blog to do for you? Don’t say, “Oh, I just want to write.” Really think about it.
How are you going to achieve those goals? Your goals will create a path for you, but you can still decide how you want to travel on that path. Some people just walk on the path – their tweets might be straight-laced for the most part, very professional, very business-oriented, perhaps. Other people might run – they want to reach their objectives as quickly as possible. Still others might choose to skip or hop on foot. How are you going to travel on the path you’ve set for yourself?
Who are you? This probably seems like either a really deep and existential question or a really simple question. Either way you slice it, you need to know how you want other people to be able to answer this question. It doesn’t really matter how you answer it, right? You already know you. You already know your company. If you ask someone a year from now, “Based on my tweets or on my blog, who do you think I am? What kind of person am I?” what kind of answer do you want to get?
This is just the beginning of what you need to start on before you actually start tweeting or blogging. Now, don’t panic if you’ve already started tweeting and blogging. Take a step back, invest in some time to answer these questions, and then see if you want to stay on the path you’re on or if you want to move on over to another one. Changing once is “finding yourself.” Changing as much as I did is when you need to see your Social Media physician.
What I did wrong
So how did I end up with SMMPD?
Simple. I didn’t start before I started the first time, the second time, or the third time. I jumped from one idea to another without really thinking about the ramifications. I didn’t have a compass. I didn’t even have a destination. I was just loafing about, hoping that something I would say would magically become viral. Viral in a good way, not in an “Ew” kind of way. Guess what? It didn’t work.
Now let’s talk about you
Are you worried that you might be showing signs of SMMPD? Are you feeling that itch to change your name or move your blog or create a whole new online persona for yourself? Before you jump into something new, let’s talk about it. Why are you feeling the need to change? Have you thought about ways to achieve your goals based on where you are now?
Talk to me. Let’s prevent SMMPD.
Image by Benjamin Earwicker. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/bjearwicke
Great article!
I know I get frustrated at times between Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, You Tube. I love the interaction with youth.
I write a column for youth called My Voice Your Choice – teens send me Q’s on life issues and I answer them. I have an email list of youth who have requested the column be sent to them – another list for educators to use the column in their schools for character education and to start conversations with their students.
I have also started posting it on Blogger along with mini blogs. I am totally stuck on how to get the Blog out to the world
http://www.myvoice-yourchoice.blogspot.com
I must have SMMPD because I afeel like I am rambling 🙂
Anyway any suggestions are most welcome.
Sara
UPower it UP!!!
What an amazing thing you’re doing!
I feel like your project is calling out for a Facebook page, especially because of the way you’re mingling words with songs and videos – Facebook would make that REALLY easy to do. It also seems like teens use Facebook a lot more than they use Twitter, so you’d be more likely to hit your target audience there.
I’d create a fan page for My Voice Your Choice. Create some custom videos for over there. Link to your blog. I think it would be a great match between medium, message, and community. Let me know if that sounds feasible 🙂
Great idea!
I have a personal page that young people can befriend me on. It is a great way to connect with them.I get lots of personal emails about their struggles.
Difficulty is I can only add another 200 names then I am at my limit of 5000. I do have a Fan Page but the young people cannot email me there with their many life Q’s.
I will create a my voice your choice page on Facebook however the youth will not be able to email me.I need to encourage them to use my email address listed on my website.
I have also just created a my voice your choice you tube page – was thinking of reading the Q with the answer – your thoughts please???
Thanks so much,
Sara
There are a lot of ways that you could get around the email issue – you can include an email address in the “info” section of the page, you could put a link in the info section leading people to a place where your email address is listed, or you could even just link to your personal page from the fan page.
As far as the customized videos, I was thinking exactly along those lines for Facebook. I think that it would mean a lot to your community to be able to actually see your passion in your face as you answer some of the questions – maybe go into singing as you answer, etc. Lots of possibilities there.
Help?
Hey Margie,
I couldn’t resist taking you up on your lunch time reading offer ;-).
I liked the fact that you coined a term for what I suffered from when I first waded into the Social Media waters.
I have worked on getting a consistent voice, image (changed the profile pic) and participated in chats on twitter where I’ve met some dynamic tweeple (post’s author included).
Where I’m struggling is positioning my blog in the social media space. I’ve changed theme, tone and voice at least twice in 2010. I made the recent change to increase the size of the audience by making it consumer friendly.
I publish what I call the social media real estate guide to buying, selling, owning and renting. My aim is to help people make better decisions about where they live.
I get great traffic to the site but I’d like to see a community develop there in the comment area and I’m beginning to think it’s my writing style (is there such a thing as too much authority in tone?)
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Hi Michael,
A few things come to mind.
First, if you look at your paragraph that begins “I publish…” you’ll notice that you have a lot going on there. You’re covering, buying, selling, renting, and owning, but what you are aiming for is to help people make better decisions about where they are living. Are those all in alignment with each other and with the name of your blog “My Brooklyn Report?”
I think your tonality is really good, and it looks like you are getting responses, which is good.
It might be that you are just going to have better luck building your community on Twitter – a more back and forth kind of exchange. Maybe you could start a specific chat or something like that – talking to people who are your target demographic.
Of course, it could also just be a matter of time. Sometimes things need to cook for a bit before they’re ready to eat 🙂
Does that help?
I think you might be on to something, Margie.
Perhaps a more narrow focus in my aim could be the thing to jump start more community interaction. (funny thing is, I get more than 20 comments on my guest posts at other blogs).
Then again, I have thought that more meaningful engagement may occur on twitter and facebook in chats that are themed around blog post topics. I’ll share with you how it’s helped.
Can’t tell you how helpful this has been (see you in the stream ;-)).
Well, if you are guest posting, you’re probably talking about a single, focused topic, right? In your blog, maybe you’re trying to envelope all of your aims and goals into each blog post, and that can be hard to hone in on.
Just a thought – it’s all about experimentation 🙂
Hah! I love this. My first six months in social media were largely trial-by-error, too.
I started out with a blogspot blog, then later upgraded to WordPress. Fortunately, I did research on “good twitter manners” and “what not to do” and that was very helpful.
Still, sometimes you just have to learn-by-doing, and making some mistakes along the way. That’s easier for the solo pro. For an established, large company though — mistakes can be costly. Companies should hire the best consultants they can afford when launching a social media campaign. That’s what I believe.
I agree, sometimes mistakes can be really helpful. However, if you’re under the gun, either from pressure coming from above or just self-imposed pressure, mistakes can seem like the end of the world, I think. And of course, everyone has a different definition for “mistake.” The stuff I’m talking about I wouldn’t necessarily define as mistakes. I’d just say they were “adjustments.” LOTS of adjustments! 🙂