You’ve probably heard or seen the word “community” a lot if you’ve been hanging around the Social Media world. Well, today, we’re going to do something a little different. We’re going to envision your community building as the building of an arch instead of a little town. If you picture an arch, you have 2 legs, a left and right, and they come together at one central stone, the keystone. The keystone locks everything into place.
Building a Social Media community means that you are going to a lot of different sites or registering your name in a lot of places. So the left side of your community arch may be your blog, your Twitter account, your Facebook page – things having to do directly with you. Let’s call the right-hand leg your traveling leg. This would be your registration with commenting sites like Disquis and LiveFyre, your inclusion in someone else’s Facebook group, or just general comments that you leave on someone else’s blog.
One thing it’s really important to have in all of these instances is a name – an identifier. And that’s what we’re going to call your keystone.
Why is your name so important?
Let’s take a hypothetical situation. Let’s say you have a blog that you call, oh, I don’t know, “Sunny Puppy Daisy Blog.” All of the blog posts show the author’s name (you) as Sunny Puppy. So, you’re blogging away and you leave a really nice mention of someone in your post. That person sees it and leaves you a really nice comment. The interacting, for them, is with someone who is going by the name Sunny Puppy. Now, let’s say based on the person’s nice comment on your post, you go find them on Twitter. They don’t follow you back right away. On Twitter, your name is Daisy Jackson. Guess what? That person you interacted with on your blog? They have no idea who you are on Twitter. It’s now taking extra time and effort to help that person become a part of your over-arching community because you have to explain to them who you are.
Now extrapolate this across all of the different channels you use. What name did you give yourself for Disqus? Are you engaging bloggers who then have no idea how to find your blog? Do you have different names for your Digg and StumbleUpon handles? How can anyone get to know you when they’re never 100% sure that you are you? It can get to be a pretty big problem.
Getting to know you, Getting to know all about you
There are millions upon millions of people tweeting and blogging and Facebooking these days, so sticking out and getting attention can be pretty difficult. To better your odds, make it easy for people to recognize you as you are walking down the various “streets” of the Social Media world. Help people connect the dots so that they see that you’re that person who wrote the really great comment and you’re also the person who tweeted that really interesting study. Help someone who gets to know you primarily through Twitter get to know you better via your blog or via your comments on their blogs. Help people build a relationship with just you rather than building relationships with six different versions of you.
If you don’t like the mushy community talk…
This advice can also help you if you are using Social Media for business. It is not the be-all or end-all of branding, but it certainly helps get your company’s name out there. If you say something useful on Twitter using your corporate account, you want people to be able to attribute that to you, then tie it to your related blog post. Your name, one of your common features across all channels, will help lock people in on both legs of your community arch.
A rose by any other name
So what is your name situation? If you comment here, will I be able to find you with ease elsewhere? Will it be easy for me to continue to build my relationship with you as I see your name popping up in different places, or will you become another face in the crowd beyond the walls of this space right here? Is your keystone in place?
How can I help you set that all important block that will lock the different parts of your community building efforts together? Just let me know.
Excellent, excellent post! The point made is one that has been troubling me, but in the opposite way.
I really don’t want the people of Blog 1 to recognize me! I found that writing as my teacher self was wonderful for my teaching blog, but the internet beckoned to me to explore further, say more, be myself and reach out. Politics especially!
But that might interfere with helping my students read. If a mom got ticked at me for something in the chat or on my other blog that was against her beliefs, bang. It might harm or end our relationship! The bad thing is, I’m not into false names, so I’m my own name in both, although I use different twitter handles. That had to change. It just had to.
I hope I don’t get found out for being me in both, by my kids’ parents…I wish I could just be myself. Then I wouldn’t have to watch my tongue as the teacher. It’s caused me to be mixed up more than once! I read another article of yours that was about exactly that. So true!
Hmm, interesting. Well, I guess what I would say is this.
When you engage in Social Media, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, or your blog, you need to imagine that everyone you know can and will see what you’re doing. That goes for whether you’re a professional like you or a teenager in high school.
I know that it can be frustrating to kind of self-censor. I do it myself. I LOVE discussing politics. I LOVE discussing religion. But I don’t touch either of those subjects here, even if I don’t have anything to say that I feel would be particularly radical. That’s because in the end, even though it’s my face and my words, I’m representing our family’s agency out here, and I don’t want to run the risk of offending existing or future clients. Since politics and religion are rife with soft spots, I just avoid them.
I would say, though it stinks, that if you want to avoid anyone finding out your true political views – you just can’t post them online, or maybe you can but a very locked down kind of blog or Facebook account.
What do you think?
Hi Marggie,
Excellent post!
Try me http://card.ly/lindamachado and let me know your opinion.
Regards
Linda
nicely done! I like that. You’re letting people know where and how to find you!
My name is very common. There are about 30 Karen Lunds on LinkedIn and I haven’t even tried to count the ones on Facebook or Twitter. (Oddly, almost half of those on LinkedIn are in Denmark, although my grandparents came from Sweden.) My biggest problem with my online identity is trying not to be confused with the others. (Although there are a soil scientist and an employee at the Library of Congress whom I’d like to meet, at least virtually.) So a while back I began using Karen5Lund as my online handle–it’s my Twitter handle and the custom URL for both LinkedIn and Facebook.
My blog goes by its own name, Circle of Ignorance, and there’s an “about me” page with short bio and badges for LinkedIn and Twitter. I never considered using my name as the name of my blog… Why should all those other Karen Lunds get credit?
Hi Karen!
Well, that’s certainly an interesting point to bring up!
I guess what I would say is that your “name” doesn’t have to literally be “your name.” I would just find a way to keep things consistent (reasonably) across the board. The main guideline for me is, “If I talk to this person at their blog site and then on Twitter, will they recognize who I am?”
I think your use of the Karen5Lund is a great compromise, and so long as people can recognize you across the different channels where you are, I don’t think it matters that that isn’t your real and actual name 🙂
Karen5Lund seems to work. (The “5,” by the way, is for my middle initial–it’s the fifth letter of the alphabet.) I also use the same photo on all sites except Facebook.
I’m interested in the Card.ly site that Linda mentioned. Someone I know uses XeeSM.com, which is similar. It looks like a good way to tie all our disparate online personas together.
I use Miller Finch across the board. I use it as my name and my branding name. The Miller is real, the Finch was chosen because I liked the sound of the two together (plus I like birds). My actual name is way too common for me to be found – I just looked on twitter and there are EIGHT pages of Liz Millers so forget that. Plus I’m not especially fond of the name Liz and the full Elizabeth is for banks and such. In school I was always called Miller by my friends (and even to this day by a friend of 40 years) or Miss Miller by the nuns. It is the only name I have that is complete as is and I like it. Combined with Finch it gives me a unique identity and a page one on google. =)
If you didn’t use your last name online, which is the same name as your family’s business, would you present a different persona than you do now?
– Miller
Hmm. That’s an interesting question, and it’s hard for me to answer because I’ve only ever worked for our family’s agency, I mean, barring various grad school & college jobs. I think there’s a certain weight when your name is on the door. You’re not just representing your place of work, but you’re also representing everyone who shares your name with you.
Still, I think that I would be cautious no matter what. My general nature is to avoid making people uncomfortable 🙂
Ahh, wait til you cross age 50, your worry about what other people think will fade away. Not that you’ll turn into a raving horrible person, but you’ll feel more comfortable in your own skin, able to express yourself without compunction. The Grand Dame era of your life.
But I do know what you mean with a family biz. I worked for my dad’s medical company for years, trade shows, office mgr. etc. and it was a given that we represented *him* because he was so widely known. Oddly enough, I drill it into my kid that her behavior reflects on me and she’d better be on best behavior, get A’s etc., so I suppose the family name is the driving force regardless of home or work. My parents named the first boy and girl after themselves and this created identity issues for the kids and problems for my dad when my brother turned into a horrible person. Yes, I was the first girl, and the first born. What a combo!