The Social Media Fear Factor

For social media enthusiasts, it is sometimes hard to understand the trepidation and anxiety that social media engenders in others, particularly in the business world. The truth is - and this is coming from someone who is pretty immersed in it - social media does a lot of exposing. There are not only a lot of potential critics out there, there are also a lot of prospects and competitors out there. If you are not on your best behavior, they may see you at a moment of weakness and they may not stick around to see if that is who you really are or not.

Starting a business has reinforced and heightened the recognition of the social media fear factor for me. It was bad enough when I was blogging on my own behalf with no revenue attached.  I worried that people would judge me for my poor spelling, my quick posts, my occasionally sarcastic sense of humor, my lack of enough cross-linking, etc., etc.  I have a brand of self-analysis that causes me to believe that I could always do better.  On my worst days it can be paralyzing because no matter how much I work on something, it could always be better.  I don't think I'm alone in feeling that way. I think it is a big reason that people are cautious about using social media for professional purposes. It is far easier to have a team of copy editors and reviewers making sure content which is published is professional (never mind if it strips out the personality). It is not helped by a general cynicism in our society that tends to make people believe the worst in others, not the best.

There is plenty to be anxious about in considering using social media for business. Among the considerations:

• Are you, as an organization, self-aware enough to know what your boundaries and limitations are - both legally and culturally?
• Are you set up to provide a place that is open enough to encourage frank criticism?
• Are you ready to respond proactively and without artifice to the criticism you do get?
• How much are you comfortable sharing with competitors? Does your business rely on IP or on execution? Do you have a collective sense of what you are comfortable sharing?
• Do you have enough interesting content and programing so that prospects will hang around long enough to get to know you even if they see a spelling mistake?
• Does everyone know what they are legally obligated to stay silent about - whether because of their industry, their customers' industry, or because of SEC regulations?

Many look at all their valid fears - whether they are as simple as having un-edited content in the public eye or whether they are concerned with law suits - and decide it is too much to take on. On the other side, I hear a lot of social media enthusiasts recommend a 'Just Do It' approach. Like many things, the reality for people concerned about the ramifications of using these new communication mechanisms is somewhere in the middle.

Let me share my own experience which I often cite as a way to get started. I had an anonymous blog for almost three years where I experimented with the whole concept of blogging.  I'll out myself - you can find that blog here. It wasn't professional and it wasn't all that interesting - I used it to catalog amusing things that I found online. But it got me used to the practice of blogging which was important and I shared it with a limited set of people and got used to the idea of 'exposing' my ad hoc writing. I also, at the same time, used an internal blog at work where we all posted links and information about the industry. It became the resource for any external information and research. Do you need to practice for 3 years? Maybe, maybe not - it depends how quickly you pick it up. When scaling to do this at an enterprise level, a couple of years of practice is not a bad thing.  Things you can do to practice:

• Use Yammer internally
• Train and encourage people within your company to have personal blogs. Run competitions.
• Introduce smaller work groups to wikis
• Implement an enterprise-wide social network (emphasis on social)
• Create group blogs to comment on industry news and events that are only accessible internally.
• Pretend to blog for an external audience before you deploy an external blog.
• Form communities of practice internally and learn how to 'manage' them

You get the idea. Practice is critical. It takes courage to start putting more of yourself and your company in its raw form out in the wild. I do it every day and still constantly remind myself that it is about the long haul, not about today's retweets. Building relationships is messy but in the end more rewarding and to build robust relationships requires some degree of exposure. It occasionally makes me anxious but I do believe it is the right thing to do so I forge ahead.

Comments

[twitter.com/marksylvester]

Excellent post - now I have a new thing to help clients get past and this post will help a lot. I like the idea of Practice, Practice, Practice. I remember when I went through a class that dealt with fear and they said it was a result of us not knowing what was coming next - that causes a fearful state. Sounds like this is very much the same - they don't know what they don't know, but if they start by practicing, then it will help them tremendously.

[Rachel Happe]

Hi Mark -

Thanks for stopping by and responding - yes, very similar and compounded by not only by the fear of failing in our own eyes but in the eyes of people we respect or whom we want to respect us. Social exposure is a really hard thing to grapple with but getting some practice allows people to understand what types of reactions they are going to get in a still protected environment.

[twitter.com/Marc_Meyer]

OK Rachel,.. what the heck??? :) The first time I commented your blog ate it. So I'll try again, even though I can't remember totally what I said the first time around..:)

A) Great road map on how to get started, I had no idea where this post was going but love where it finished!! b) We will always have to conquer fear and trepidation when pitching or suggesting anything that smells of social media. Thus small steps is key.

We are so far away from any type of comfort level with this that I'm amazed, or maybe I shouldn't be, by what I hear every day. Education, education, education...

Great Post!

[Rachel Happe]

Hi Marc -

1 - Thanks for stopping by, reading, retweeting & commenting.

2 - I'm very sorry that my blog ate your first comment. I'm not particularly fond of the comment workflow on TypePad but I'm less fond of the idea of moving my blog.

3 - I ramble but I did have a point and yes... lots of education and practice! Seems obvious but when I think of Twitter - I was learning the norms as they were evolving so I learned one thing at a time. Coming in now there is RTing, @ing, hashtags, Twitterchats, trending topics, cc's, URL shorteners, all these apps... much more complicated than it was back in the day when I used the web interface and had no groups. Remember when Twitter search was Summize?

[Matt Garcia]

I think another thing that takes some consideration is that blogs are meant to be conversational. People like to be talked TO rather than talked AT so to a certain extent, treating your blog as a conversation tool means that it doesn't have to be perfect (thereby diminishing (some of) the fear). You can admit that you don't know about this blog thing AS you try it out and let your audience give you feedback on what they want to hear about. Of course, that's not always possible when your one reader is the Viagra seller down in Sao Paulo :D

But, personally, I think much of the fear about social media is that people fear that they have to have a perfect offering (blog post, tweet etc.). But if you embrace that uncertainty and bring your critics into the conversation, I think it builds a better tool anyway for interaction with your members.

Great post, though! It's a scary social media world out there. :)

[Rachel Happe]

Matt -

That is a great perspective and one of the things that I've definitely noticed is that if you are perfect and have the answer for everything, it doesn't allow room for conversation. Definitely good advice.

Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

[maricela morales]

Our take after a combined 10 years building and managing communities is that we must go thru this and force enterprises to start focusing on what we call Solution Value (definition at 2b2collaboration.com) we found out that business decision makers were missing so many of the key fundamentals for better outcomes and just expecting the technology was going to solve problems by itself, we finally decided to focus on the people and fundamentals for better outcomes.

[Rachel Happe]

Hi Maricela -

Thanks for stopping by and commenting - it is interesting that people continue to put the great white hope in technology alone, thinking it will be easy and expedient. It rarely is, it's almost always about change management.