Originally published at BostInnovation.com
I’ve been meaning to write something on the question of being one’s full, authentic self online—specifically on Twitter–for a while now. When I say being one’s full self, I’m not suggesting we share everything and anything on Twitter. I’m more interested in questions like: How much information is too much information to share? Should I aim to strike a balance between my personal and professional interests or is it better to keep these two worlds separate? How often should I chat with people via Twitter? When is tweeting about one’s own work informative and helpful and when is it plain old, unattractive self-promotion?
I’ve thought about all of these questions quite a bit since falling in love with Twitter a little over a year ago. I’ve also learned a lot about wise Twitter behavior by following some pretty stellar people, most of whom are leaders in their fields with pretty large followings.
Here’s what I’ve gathered:
Be honest about who you are and what you’re interested in. For those of us who use Twitter for business, it’s tempting to want to tweet all the time about that one project we’re working on currently. Most people don’t want to follow people who are all business, all the time though. Do you?
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by Lex on September 2, 2010
Originally published at BostInnovation.com
As an entrepreneur and lover of big ideas, I read and follow many other creative folks online. And when I say follow, I mean follow-the-work-of, yes, but I also just mean follow on Twitter.
The great thing about Twitter is that if you make thoughtful choices about who to follow, you quickly get a feel for what’s really happening in your field — what collective ideas are brewing, what kinds of projects people are working on, what kind of language people are using to talk about all of those ideas and projects.
Much of the time, people I follow write and talk about interesting things using engaging, slightly surprising language. They hook me in. Equally often though, I notice many people using what feels like old, tired language to communicate new, otherwise interesting (sometimes even groundbreaking) ideas — language so tired it has little to no chance of making me want to click a hyperlink so as to find out more.
As anyone in the online world knows, getting me to click is crucial.
Tired language is a problem because it doesn’t mean anything anymore. What sort of language am I talking about exactly? Obvious examples are phrases like “follow your dreams” or “make a difference.” I stopped caring about these phrases in my teens and instinctively move away from them whenever I see them. I delete the Email, I leave the website, I ignore the tweet. Despite being positive ideas, phrases like these turn me off rather than invite me in. They do the exact opposite of what they are intended to do.
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