Social Media Personality ~ Think before you leap!

I believe that your social media personality will effect how you interact with people online, how you are perceived, what your goals for social media are, and what social media channels you decide to use. That's why it's important to consider your online personality as part of your overall social media plan (whether you have a formal company plan, or just some informal ideas on how you wish to use social media for personal use).

Before you post, tweet, comment, or insert appropriate verb here, it's important to consider how your comment could be perceived by other people who don't know you. I, for example, have a very dry sense of humour, which doesn't come across well in the written form! I understand this, and realize that if I want to keep my professional personality intact online, I must carefully watch my choice of words. It's much easier to choose your words carefully before you post, rather than having to try and explain yourself after you post!

Staying true to my psychology training, I did some online research on social media personality. There are numerous attempts to explain and pigeonhole online personality types in 5, 7, or 11 nicely defined categories. In reality, I'm not sure that you can really slot yourself nicely into anyone of these categories (let me know if you can, because I'm having a hard time doing it!).

So, research aside, my opinion is that defining your online social media personality really comes down to staying true to yourself or your company's values, and being honest. Social media is, after all, a place to be sociable! I see this as the approach of many companies that have chosen to have an online presence. Vancity, for example, engages their customers and community through Twitter, LinkedIn, and You Tube. What I was most impressed with, however, is that Vancity publicly displays their social media approach and guidelines. From these pages, we can see their approach is to "engage with people" and have conversations about community. Their guidelines reflect that the employee should be themselves, use casual language, but also be mindful before they post. My favourite guidelines is "...I will think twice and write once". Words to live by!

In terms of my own social media personality, I would say that I exude a casual, but thoughtful personality (still unsuccessfully trying to fit myself in to one of those personality types...). I administer the Facebook page for the Greater Vancouver Orienteering Club (shameless plug - really, it's a LOT of fun!). On this page I use a friendly, chatty tone to entice people to our events, to be part of the club, and also to engage with the orienteering community, both in Vancouver and across Canada. On my LinkedIn profile (again, shameless plug!), I maintain the professional side of my personality. But that's who I am as a person. I am professional in that I consider everything I post for tone and content, but I prefer to keep things friendly and accessible.

People are not stupid (you can interpret this as a good or a bad thing!), and therefore honesty is the best policy! When creating your social media personality, keep it real, but "think twice and write once".

What do you think? Do you have any tips for creating your online personality?