Two posts in a row regarding thoughts from Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee over at Twitter). Yesterday, he had a passionate video post about the web’s impacts (or should I say disclosures) of people’s true selves on the web. I found it very relevant. Particularly because earlier in the day Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang over at Twitter), twittered something he heard mentioned at a conference he was at where “Speaker Robin Wolaner says “I’ve not done business with people because of their status updates” Be professional in professional neworks”.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg2MukcqbdE
So, Gary is spot on. Everything can captured and those that elect to participate are even more visible obviously. Everyone can be the media. So the question is what is good, what is bad? Often times, the definition is unequivocal. I am not thinking about those scenarios, I’m more concerned about the “gray” area. Back to Jeremiah’s twitter, what is professional and what is unprofessional? Same thing, more concerned with the “gray” area. Twitter is a service to express “what are you doing?” It is not a feature of LinkedIn where you express “what are you doing professionally today?”
So how are blogs, videos, tweets that are more personal perceived? Going out for drinks with co-workers ON A TUESDAY in the middle of the week! Gray? Bad? Unprofessional? If you blog or twitter a couple of years ago that you never wanted to work in a certain industry but fate has brought you exactly there, is all hope lost? They will know. Yes, I swing the pendulum to the extreme to make the point. But it will be very interesting to see where the meme heads.
It used to be that your resume was your personal brand. Just the other day, I was having a conversation with a co-worker about why people still insist on placing “less-than-professional” home email addresses on their resume. It is so avoidable but it is still done. And this is now a such a small set of bytes on one piece of digital paper and is now the least of concerns, a small drop in the ocean of information that could be more readily available with a small amount of investigation.
So in closing, of course, do not be “bad”, do not be “unprofessional”. There are a lot of things that are clear in the views of most. But with all things, people do not define things or form opinions the same way. So now, more than ever, the divide that is closed through technology is going to play an even greater role.
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