| Subcribe via RSS

Honest Negotiation

April 19th, 2010 Posted in Building Community

A couple months back, I had the pleasure of attending the Online Community Unconference. One thing that really struck me was how many people, many relatively new to community as a job function, struggled to understand how to balance working in social media with a certain desire to keep at least some part of their life private. Being new to the industry, the social media douchebaggery apparently dictates that you can’t be successful in social media unless you open up every aspect of your life and career and personality to the entire world. Anything less is the mark of the uncommitted.

Bullshit.

The answer to the question of privacy vs. openness isn’t about what’s “right” or “wrong” according to the wonks and pundits. The answer is what you and the community work with decide on together. Whether this decision is an open discussion or an unspoken agreement, the answer comes out of Honest Negotiation.

It’s very likely that the community you work with doesn’t expect you to tell them what you had for dinner last night or to give them your bank account number. It’s easy to get caught up in discussions about transparency and openness, only to start to believe that if you don’t share this level of detail you’re somehow failing.

But community work needs to come with boundaries. When my daughter was born, I dialed back on a lot of the personal information sharing I’d done prior to her birth. Never once did anyone say anything about it. I’ve heard many female community managers tell me that that they use a pseudonym rather than their real name because they wanted that level of protection. I’ve know many community builders who purposely don’t live their lives in the public eye.

These aren’t wrong decisions. They’re the right decisions for the people involved. The trick to maintaining a comfortable level of privacy while also being a successful social media/community worker is to be upfront about the decisions you make, when and how you need to be. Using a pseudonym in a community with very little personal sharing (such as a question/answer based tech support forum) probably doesn’t require you to talk about the fact you’re using that pseudonym. While other communities where you know people personally through online and offline activities (such as a crafting community group) may require you to share your boundaries as part of a profile or open discussion.

My point here is simple: Do what’s right for you and your community. Find the place that makes you feel comfortable and safe. If you don’t have those two things, your work as a community manager will absolutely suffer. And giving up comfort and safety in the hopes of being a better community manager rarely works out that way.

Like this post? Check out some related content:
This entry was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 9:23 am and is filed under Building Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Rebecca Cooper

    Jake – a very succinct summary of the session we attended. My own experience, that I shared with the rest of the attendees, was that I like to share a certain level of my life with the communities I manage – where I'm from, where I live now, my three kids, a few interests, the level of experience I have, a profile picture – but I lock down my social media profiles so I can share pictures of my kids or discuss politics or share events I attend with only people I trust, who won't use the information to hurt me or undercut me later.

    It seemed that the discussion centered around what is the “authentic self”, and I believe strongly that you can be authentic without sharing every single detail of your life with the communities you manage. A good example would be the fact that I manage a community that has a strong “liberal vs. conservative” political debate board. If I shared what my own politics were, those on the other side would accuse me of bias every single time I had to warn them to tone it down.

    Everyone who works in this space should feel free to have compartments in their online lives just like they do in their real lives. You don't talk about the same things with your boss as you do with your spouse as you do with your best friend as you do with your children as you do with an acquaintance on the street as you do with an employee, right? It doesn't have to be different on the Internet.

  • http://www.communityguy.com Jake McKee

    Excellent points, Rebecca!

  • http://www.sueontheweb.com Sue

    Excellent points. That is one reason why my personal Facebook page is so I can connect with close friends and family only. I don't use my personal page to make professional connections, (there are others places to do that such as Facebook groups or Linkedin), nor would I open it up to members of my community. We are all entitled to draw a land in the sand when it comes to how much personal information we share. Transparency should be about the way in which we present ourselves to others: to be true to ourselves. Eg. my personality shines through whilst I am in communication with members of the community I manage, but my personal life stays in the shadows.