Jessica, aka @bestofjessThoughts on drawing the line
from emfluence Marketing Maven
Jessica Best, aka @bestofjess & @emfluence

o•ver•share [ ōvər shér ] v. Overshare in social media can mean
(1) bombarding your audience with too many posts or too much content or (2) going a little too far behind the curtain. If you want to know if you’re oversharing in the first definition, check out this month’s post on when to say when in email marketing: listen to your social media audience and if they stop paying attention, you know you need to back off.

But what about the second definition? What counts as oversharing information in a world where people tweet their breakfast? What is TMI (too much info) about a person or company you follow? Some might argue that it would depend on if it’s content from a personal account or on behalf of a brand, but I have a rule of thumb that I think you can apply to either situation:

Act as if the online world were one big cocktail party.

First of all, because it’s more fun to think of it that way. Second because there are all kinds of cocktail parties, just like there are all kinds of appropriate profiles in social media.

The Work Bash
If you connect mostly with colleagues and clients on LinkedIn, only post things you’d be comfortable saying at a networking event for an organization you’re a part of. If you use LinkedIn for prospecting, perhaps think of it as a networking event for the Chamber of Commerce where you don’t know very many people in the room yet.

Happy Hour with Friends
Chances are high you’re not super close with every single one of your friends on Facebook. Chances are even better you haven’t changed your Facebook privacy settings from its default “friends of friends” permissions, meaning if someone is friends with your friend, she can see everything about your page: pictures, posts, the works. So treat Facebook as if you and your friends were at a bar for cocktail hour: you should be authentic, but say only what you wouldn’t mind the next table over hearing you say. If you choose to be friends with coworkers and clients on Facebook, you’re back at the business networking event above.

Backyard Barbecue
Ok, let’s say you really do know 100% of the people that have access your Instagram photos, you’ve mastered the art of Facebook privacy settings or you have a private Twitter account that you wouldn’t dare allow your boss to follow. Before you unleash the snarky comments about your co-workers, remember: there is always someone at the party you don’t know that well. Or the neighbor who is fantastic at eavesdropping over the back fence. And, afterall, if you’re saying it out loud, it’s for someone to hear. So do a gut-check review of every comment as though it might get sold to VH1 someday when you’re famous.

What about for a brand or company account? How much should you share about taking your employees out for lunch? What if it turns into a margarita lunch? What about posting hilarious overheard comments to show how well your team gets along? Maybe. But run it through the cocktail party checklist. For a corporate account, every post has to pass the Chamber of Commerce test. If this tweet or Facebook picture were the first thing someone at a Chamber networking event ever learned about you, is that an impression you’re ok with leaving?

You don’t have to chain yourself to boring work plugs, compliments on your boss or your company’s teamwork and what you had for breakfast. Just try and keep in mind that tweets are the undead, the internet is forever and that no matter what you say online, someone is listening.

Kind of like having your own radio station.


2 COMMENTS:

  1. Oversharing can truly turn others off. What are your thoughts on the opposite dilemma… undersharing? It seems it might be more difficult to tell when that happens.

  2. For marketers, we hardly ever need an excuse to try and boost how much we use something that works. But in the case of the store customer that says “I didn’t hear about it!” you know you’re missing some opportunities.

    That’s just anecdotal of course, but if you feel like you’re not getting through, it may be ok to boost contact to more than once per month.

    For example, more than one of our clients recently said they didn’t know we were even working on social media tools to add to the Marketing Platform (we just rolled them live a month ago or so) and we were baffled! We know it’s time to step up and send a bit more mail.

    Thanks for the comment, Ogun!
    Jessica

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