"What is a friend? A friend is a single soul dwelling within two bodies." - Aristotle
How to Change the Wind
My wife--my business partner, mother to my children, my reason for living--directs traffic from inside her car. She'll sit in the driver's seat with the windows up telling cars, "Okay, now you go. Now I go. Hey! Not you! You don't go yet!" I wonder at times if she actually believes she can dictate how people will move through the most mysterious and misunderstood anomaly of American suburban travel: The four-way stop.
Of course, she cannot. In fact, it may be she who doesn't know the rules. It may be that the rules are subject to individual interpretation up to the moment when a cop arrives and starts handing out tickets for doing it wrong. Of course, when the cop leaves, we're right back to the same anarchic state in which we were before he got there. Fat lot of good that did us.
So Facebook was created for young people to be silly and make nice with old friends and now people (like me) have shown up and are polluting the previously unspoiled air with business. "People I work with," I hear ad nauseum, "keep wanting to be my Facebook 'friend.' I don't want to 'friend' on Facebook with business people. That's what LinkedIn is for. How can I keep Facebook personal?"
If Only Everyone Were More Like Me
If I had a dollar for every time I'd heard this question, I'd have enough to mount a really spiffy public address system on the family vehicle so that my wife's verbal traffic directions may actually have some impact. I was once told Facebook wasn't made for business so it wasn't a good place for businesspeople to network and collaborate. I recently heard a speaker advise a group of entrepreneurs to decline business invitations on Facebook and direct them to LinkedIn.
Game that out. Doesn't work, does it? Did you tick anyone off? Did something get lost in translation? Did everyone currently or potentially in your network get the message?
Whatever these things started out to be is not what they are, nor what they will be. If you really need a place to misbehave online, there will be a social network that plays to your niche, that has intentionally poor search engine optimization and on which you can use a alias just in case. (Don't like that idea? Go to www.ning.com and start your own.) The overwhelming evidence is, however, that Facebook is being taken over by grown ups who behave online like they do in public, and who mix business with personal.
For more in-depth discussion on that matter, there are any number of blogs out there, including earlier issuances of Swift Kick.
Losing Your Lunch
Here's the converse, on which I could only buy a souped-up megaphone but that's definitely out there: "I don't care how wonderful your chicken salad sub was. I'm only on Facebook to do business. How can I filter out all the updates about how many pounds you've dropped using Wii and only get the business stuff?"
Good news: If you're not interested in other people and what matters to them, you won't have to worry about having too many customers. We connect on a personal level because we can, because we want to. We do business with people we know and understand. Don't believe me? Take a look at the "us vs them" model so prevalent in corporate America and tell me how it's doing these days. We are witnessing the end of an era; the dinosaurs who once ruled are disappearing into history. The continents of global business are drifting. We live in a world of transparency. I don't need a private eye; I have Google, LinkedIn and Facebook; and even if I don't know you I know someone who knows someone who does.
Within the next--oh, let's say two years, social media will develop content filters sophisticated enough to help you efficiently cut through this "clutter," but for now you're stuck with it. Oh, sure, you can "hide" content and we all do--I don't want to be responsible for bad language on my page,
for example, so I'll turn you off if you express yourself with naughty words--but think carefully because the same lady who likes to inform you of her satisfaction level with her pedicure might also be the same one who publicly laments her inability to find a satisfactory professional who can re-design her office interior, web page, company logo, etc., etc.
And really, I pity you. Facebook, I tell my audiences, is LinkedIn for humans. Leave yesterday's corporate behind and come be a human with the rest of us. Where did you go for lunch? Maybe I've been there. Maybe I had a funny experience. Maybe that's where Tom Brady knocked over my beer with his throwing arm the year after he won his first MVP award. Maybe that's just the beginning of a great story. Doesn't matter, really, you'll never hear it and we'll never connect on that level because you don't want to share your opinion of a chicken salad sub.
You have to operate within the culture. On LinkedIn, don't you dare talk about your lunch. On Facebook, eventually you have to. One's all business all the time, the other is where we go to let people know that maybe we are or will do business together and regardless, I care about whether or not you're doing well. That's not weakness and it's not a waste of time. It's being a person. There's not a magic formula on how much business vs how much personal you can do, but like anything else anymore be entertaining and informative or be left alone.
Separating "Me" and "Myself" from "I"
This will be quick: Are you a small business operator? Do you work for a company that has customers? Do you have accounts that you manage? If you answered "yes" to any one of these or virtually any other question about business, your personality is a large part of the product that you market. People will do business with people...(emphasize "people," pause for effect...)with whom they feel comfortable; people that they know. Want to be Zeke the buttoned-up financial analyst by day and "the Mad, Mad, Mad Zekester of Blood Underground, the best unsigned Goth/Death Metal Fusion band on the Eastern Seaboard" after dark? Sorry, um, Zekester, that ship has sailed. At least one of your multiple personalities is going to have to live "off the grid." And...well, his days are numbered, regardless. Truth finds a way.
Putting a Bow on it
Being all-powerful in any instance is not a realistic expectation. Social media is a nascent industry and it can't keep up with its own growth so some patience will be required. It will be a while until you'll be able to customize your tools to your preferred modus operandi.
You go be you. Act like your mother's watching. She might be. Act like you care and you might actually start to care.
Read Aristotle. It will make you smarter and you'll have some stuff to contribute if you're not ready to talk about culinary affairs or traffic; and it might help you come up with a creative way to get your smart, hard working, hot, sexy wife to start reading your blog.
Epilogue
- In the countries that use four-way stops, pedestrians always have priority at crosswalks – even at unmarked ones, which exist as the logical continuations of the sidewalks at every intersection with approximately right angles – unless signed or painted otherwise.
- Whichever vehicle first stops at the stop line – or before the crosswalk, if there is no stop line – has priority.
- If two vehicles stop at the same time, priority is given to the vehicle on the right.
- If three vehicles stop at the same time, priority is given to the two vehicles going in opposite directions, if possible.
- If four vehicles stop, drivers usually use gestures and other communication to establish right-of-way.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic)
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