Matt Singley | Social Media Optimization

I’ve been thinking about the ever-increasing blurry line between public and private lives now that social media is mainstream.  I’ve personally been opening myself up to the world for about a decade; I started blogging by developing my own (very basic) blogging platform before the term “blog” was popular…and I haven’t looked back since then.

There have been a couple of times that I was alarmed by what people are capable of thinking or doing.  A few years ago I started getting anonymous comments on various videos of my children, asking me to pose them in certain ways or have them do certain things.  Naturally I deleted all traces of the videos online (yes it is possible) and became very aware of what I was posting after that.  Although I was always careful to never name them or reveal the location of my children even before this incident, I became very protective after that and have been quite conscious of what I would and would not publish.  Over the years I have become more widely known because of my marketing and social media work, and although I’m certainly a small fish in a big pond, I do have a lot of connections with people that I’ve never met face to face.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade my social media life.  I’ve turned so many of my digital-first relationships into real-life relationships, and I love social media and the way it connects the world. But, and there is always a but… (more…)

One of the wonderful things about social media is that it’s still a bit of the Wild West.  Sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, while all covered nicely with their Terms of Service Agreements, are really very self-governing in terms of what content is produced.  When I talk to thought leaders and everyday users of these spaces about rules and norms, the divide is evenly split, with half saying that there should be rules imposed, the other half saying that it’s free speech all the way.  I tend to fall into the latter camp, although I do have three rules of my own that I try to follow.  Why?  Because I really do believe in social norms, and even though we are interacting with people in a digital sense, we are still interacting…we’re sharing the space and I want to do my part to be a good person.

If that reason isn’t compelling enough and you think I want to just sit around and hold hands with all of my digital friends, singing Kumbaya and roasting S’mores over some UGC campfire, then consider this: what you say online today will likely be searchable (and therefore discoverable) forever.  You may not care about having an outburst on Twitter right now because it doesn’t affect you, but down the road you may be in another position altogether, perhaps looking for a job.

Both of these are reasons enough for me to watch what I publish, so I have adopted these three basic guidelines. (more…)