New media - do's and don'ts

Should you join Twitter? Should you build a Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile? These are constant questions for the business man and woman. As a public relations professional and obsessive-compulsive networker, my answer has to be "Yes," but it's a cautious yes.

I've actually gained new clients through these social media sites, and also reconnected with long-lost friends (my old high school friend from Edinburgh, Scotland, turned out to be living 30 miles away, which was a wonderful discovery).

I should qualify that and say that nothing; nothing at all of any business use has come out of Twitter. There's a respected writer for one of the country's top business weeklies who Tweets regularly (I imagine she was encouraged to do so by an editor curious about this new phenomenon) and it's disappointingly irrelevant to be getting a blow-by-blow account of the life of a business journalist. Furthermore, there's a weird disconnect between the gushy inanity of her sharing the mundane details of her day-to-day life and the fact that it's almost impossible to get her to respond to a professionally crafted story pitch. I thought her a monolith of seriousness and editorial hard-to-convince impartiality. Instead, it turns out she's picking up the kids from school.

Frankly, the whole business of scrolling through Facebook entries that include minutae of what your friends ate for dinner, or whether they're standing in line for Bruce Springsteen tickets, does nothing to raise one's general respect for humanity. Worse, there's been a rash of new types of messages available on Facebook, presumably to increase traffic, and I keep getting sent a bucket of sheep, or an alleged "drink" (I wish!), or an invitation to sign a petition freeing Roman Polanski or join the Nazi party (okay, I made that last bit up). Perhaps it was better when the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation instead of bleating about it the whole damn time.

Nevertheless, on Facebook you are at liberty to check in on such messages from time to time or ignore them entirely. Meanwhile, it's not a bad way to track down someone you've lost touch with, or wish to make a connection with on a business basis, so I recommend you build a basic profile, connect with a few "friends", and see if anything happens. If anyone sends you an actual personal message, you'll get an email about it, with the message included in the body of the text, plus a link if you want to respond via Facebook.

Tweeting, meanwhile, unless you're a female student at Tehran University, is for the birds.

LinkedIn has a more concertedly business focus, but this renders it a little dry for my taste. You find contacts to include on your network by either searching for them, by responding to automatically generated suggestions gleaned from the resume you build online, or by accepting invitations from people who have found you. It's quite clever and intuitive. The system searches for commonalities in terms of companies at which you've worked, or people who are at one remove. You're at liberty to invite them onto your network or not; and they're at liberty to accept or decline. No buckets of sheep anywhere. You get an email anytime someone on your network moves jobs, or changes their resume. You can also request an introduction by someone you know to someone you want to know. It all sounds great, but somehow it doesn't quite sparkle. Still, if you have 20 minutes to spare to set up an account, I recommend you give it a try.

One tip that might help you manage these processes: set up a separate gmail account that you use only to register for social networking sites or other services you're not 100% sure you want in your life. That way, you can check in on activity when you wish, but won't be interrupted during a conference call by your ex-girlfriend sending you a geodesic dome or a kick in the pants.

Once you're on the virtual Rotten Row, though, be VERY careful about what you put out there. I can't emphasize this enough. This is way, way beyond doing your laundry in public.

Take the example of the exec from Ketchum (one of New York's more prestigious and expensive public relations firms), who "tweeted" a derogatory message about Memphis while on his way to visit mega-client, Federal Express, which has its headquarters in that fine city. The fallout was ugly. By the way, there's an important sub-moral to this story. When you're choosing your online name, try to make it a little on the humble side. Mr. KeyInfluencer, the author of the offending Tweet, whoever he is, is now out of a job.

Sometimes, a hasty post can get you sued, as did a lady in Chicago who complained online about her building's management company. 

One of the most interesting issues raised by the whole social media craze is the increasing way in which our business lives and our social lives are becoming entangled. Are we always at work; or always socializing? It seems neither and both. Perhaps the real answer is that new communications technology makes us all more publicly visible than we once were, whether we like it or not. In my opinion, transparency has become the defining quality of the early 21st century. Our new municipal buildings are being built out of almost entirely glass; there is a CCTV camera for every six citizens of the United Kingdom; Letterman would rather admit he had sex with his staff than be blackmailed. And, thanks to Facebook, I know far more about my realtor's boyfriend's state of mind than I could possibly have imagined ten years ago. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? I don't know. But I do know it's a thing, and it's here to stay for a while.

All in all, as with email, remember that any electronic communication is far more public than a letter or phone call, and that you have absolutely zero control over its dissemination. The principle is simple: think hard before you click the "send" button.