I had a great conversation yesterday with Liz Strauss on Twitter (so, I guess it was a “tweetversation”, right? Anybody?). The initial question from Liz was “Do you think that some / all / most people who use social media for business have an issue with behaving in unprofessional ways?”
Now, obviously people use social media for a wide range of reasons – not all business. And I like to think that those of us using social media for business purposes are using it in the most professional way possible (for the medium, at least). But has our definition of “professional” gone a bit lax since social media came along? Are we just giving out too much information (TMI)?
So I responded to Liz with the following:
“I think the face of business has changed tremendously in this century - definition of ‘business-like’ is much different
“no excuse for people to act like jerks on Twitter or Facebook, but social media have made communication more casual”
And the conversation ensued:
Liz: In what way? To us or to offline folks as well?
Me: offline, we still (try) to act with decorum (at least, I like to hope so). I think that's human nature.
Me: although, social media has made the web much more conversational and transparent
Liz: Who decides what's *too casual*…when does it start working against us?
Hmmm…
Me: if you're using social media for business, then obviously your customers don't need to know what you're eating for lunch, etc.
Me: but the beauty of social media for business is conversing w/ your customers instead of marketing at them
Liz: I'm just wondering if it's getting too easy to get too casual without realizing it -- because we're all so used to being here.
Now back to my original question – has our definition of “professional” become more relaxed. I asked Liz what her definition of “too casual” is:
Liz: to me "too casual" would be something that makes lots of folks who don't know me yet question my credibility solely on that.
This really made me think. When we’re on a social media site like Twitter, what kind of things could we as business professionals say to lose credibility with our audience?
Lots of people tweet about what they’re eating, watching on TV, and the other mundane details of their days; but where’s the line between engaging conversation and just TMI? Tell me what you think!
