An acronym frequently Tweeted today is IRL (In Real Life) or IRL meet up, which refers to a face-to-face meeting between people. The idea is connecting with people In Real Life after meeting or chatting on Twitter chats or similar. Ive had the good fortune to be part of a few IRL meet ups in the past few weeks with friends and colleagues that I met online.
After one particular meet up I was told: Wow, youre so friendly? You seemed so sarcastic and hard-nosed online! While happy that I pleasantly surprised my guest at this first meeting, the comment underscored the fact that my first impression was less-than-positive.
As I had never had a telephone, Skype or IRL conversation with this person, that impression was formed through the various comments I had made in online chats, through Twitters posts or Status updates.
This made me question: what is my Social Media Personality?
All our online communications are perceived by the public based on their interpretation of the comment or posts honesty, seriousness, authenticity, presentation or even the location and frequency of the post. This unwittingly establishes a personality for you or your business.
So how do you determine what your Social Media personality is and can you affect it when, for example, youre only allowed 140 characters posts on Twitter?
- Does appending a smiley face to a sarcastic tweet effectively convey your light-hearted and fun nature? Or is it perceived as an attempt to hide your true sarcastic nature for the sake of social niceties or possibly insincerity?
- Is tweeting a differing point of view on a topic seen as a sign of intelligence or are you seen as a hater (someone how must disagree with any comment for the sake of disagreeing).
How is a Social Media personality formed?
Recently Gravity7 released a discussion paper that outlined how they will start to look at Social Media personality types. The brief summarized:
Your Social Media personality manifests through your communication style and inclinations; in how you:
- Ask, answer, or comment and in the type of interest drawn to yourself
- Listen, empathize, understand, and in the type of interest shown in others
- Writings and contribute communicative acts and the way you express your interests
- Mediate, share, forward, link and in how you show interest in relationships
Further, your perceived social media personality can be established through interactive types of social media.
- The type of social interest show in being socially present
- The type of interest taken in symbolic real exchange interactions and their relationships
- The type of interest taken in the dynamics of social status and rank
- The type of interest taken in the social economy of attention.
Are you cognoscente of your communication style or interaction mannerisms?
What does this mean for your brand?
What does your brands communication style and interaction type convey about the its personality?
This point further emphasizes comments made in my previous posts that for businesses, social media while social is also a science. Its quite easy to create and communicate through blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc but the impact of such actions should be carefully considered before engaging.
Your Social Media plan, developed with input from the PR, customer service, sales and marketing teams, must venture beyond the tactics and consider what Social Media impression its creating.
Warning. Be aware of your brand and your teams personality when creating content for online syndication or discussions but dont strategically infuse it. This will surely come across as fake or inauthentic and create a negative personality impression that will drive engagement down.
RELATED POST: Are You a Good Social Media Conversationalist?
Do you strategize your online content to demonstrate or create your social media personality? Have you even considered what it might be? Join in on the discussion, post your comments below.
Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego
Follow Sam on Twitter
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