Own Your Opinions

November 10, 2011 by · 2 Comments

Graffiti outside Tigers Stadium in Detroit, Michigan
My post about Twitter disclaimers really seems to have touched a nerve. In the comments here and on Twitter, folks have been sharing their thoughts about the “tweets are my own” phrase, with several people rethinking their Twitter bios altogether.

Thnx for today's post @! Rethinking my Twitter bio now...
November 8, 2011 4:54 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite
@meeshspeaks
Michele Kumi Baer
Love this latest from @ http://t.co/oxarWqVK | Agreed: personal twitter, don include the name of your nonprofit or biz!
November 8, 2011 6:45 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite
@FundraiserBeth
Beth Ann Locke
Excellent thoughts by @ on those silly disclaimers people put in their twitter profiles http://t.co/3oG3s41A
November 9, 2011 11:00 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite
@Indy_Mode
Mandy Valentine
@ Just shared your post on FB & Twitter on "opinions not my own". I've been lecturing on this type of SM issues forever!
November 9, 2011 10:34 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@MRGottschalk
Marla Gottschalk PhD

The consensus seems to be that this conversation is important to have, not only for employees, but employers as well. And I think people are beginning to realize that having a disclaimer in your Twitter bio really means nada in terms of protecting yourself or your job.

I think some, myself included might have felt some security in the disclaimers, but as you point out at the end of the day it matters not. I agree with the general rule of thumb, if you’re worried about who will read it or if it could be taken out of context, don’t post it. – @ToscanoAdvisors

To me, phrases like “opinions are my own” only dilute whatever messages you’re sending out into the world. It implies that you don’t want to take responsibility for what you say online if it happens to relate to your organization. It also makes you look fearful of losing your job because of a Twitter comment. (Ironically, this also doesn’t exactly make your employer look so good, either. Right? I mean, who would want to work at an overly bureaucratic organization that monitors their employees’ tweets? See my post on the Facebook firings at Hispanics United.)

In fact, if your employer is requiring you to have the disclaimer as a condition of employment (yikes!), this might be an opportunity for you to practice leadership by sharing the following articles with your colleagues to let them know how useless (and perhaps even harmful) the current social media policy may be for the organization.

The Bottom Line

Whatever you say on Twitter (or Facebook or on your blog, for that matter) are your opinions, and they stand much stronger without the (non)legalspeak. Own them.

Why?

Because that’s what leaders do.

We’ll be talking more about these nuances and more next week on my new webinar, Personal Branding 101: How to Use Social Media to Accelerate Your Career. Join us!

Filed Under: Leadership, Social Media · Tagged With: , ,

Your Tweets Are Not Your Own

November 8, 2011 by · 23 Comments

This post is part of my ongoing Social Media 101 series to encourage leaders to learn more about social media and use it effectively in their life and work.

I love Twitter. It’s one of the social media tools I use most frequently to grow my professional network and build my personal brand. But there’s one thing I’ve noticed lately: some people are putting some weird disclaimers in their Twitter profiles. I mean, we only have 160 characters to tell people how awesome we are in our bios, and there are people out there who are using up at least 17 of them saying things like “tweets are my own” or “opinions are my own.”

Well, who else’s tweets would they be? Your face is the one on your Twitter profile, so . . .

Here’s what I mean, in a few examples (no offense to these folks, but I really think their thoughts stand stronger on their own without the disclaimer):

Contrary to popular belief, you’re not really protecting yourself by putting that little disclaimer out there. (Neither is your employer, for that matter, if their policy governs employee’s use of social media too broadly. See the National Labor Relations Board’s Acting General Counsel report detailing the outcome of investigations into 14 cases involving the use of social media and employers’ social and general media policies. See also: 8 Reasons Social Media Policies Backfire.)

I mean, if you diss your boss on Twitter, you’re still gonna have to face the consequences, yes? If you tweet something that your employer or colleagues find super-offensive or contrary to the mission of your organization, you’ll still have to face the music of them reacting negatively to your opinions. Right? You can’t exactly yell “immunity!” if someone calls you out on a hate-filled Twitter rant.

Here’s another nuance I find curious.

When people state where they WORK in their Twitter profile, but simultaneously assert that their opinions are their own. Um, not exactly. Now that your followers know where you work, it’s pretty hard for them to completely separate your thoughts from the culture of the organization. So if you want to know the truth, your tweets are not 100% your own when you tell the world where you work. And unfortunately, you can’t have it both ways – piggybacking off your organization’s brand and then being able to say whatever you want.

Your tweets are not your own. 

Sorry to burst the bubble. But really, let’s stop wasting precious Twitter characters on the disclaimers, shall we? Just be smart about what you say, the same way you would in face-to-face conversations. It seems complex, this business of being human on the internet. But it’s really not.

Just take a look at a few examples of non-disclaimer Twitter profiles:

See? Twitter works just fine without all the (non)legalspeak. Need more advice?  Take heed of these simple, yet wise words from @almameeker:

@ i try to go by this rule of thumb: if i wouldn't say it in a crowded room of people i respect, i don't say it here.
October 31, 2011 11:48 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@almameeker
Alma Meeker

Do you have a disclaimer in your Twitter profile? Why or why not?

Filed Under: Social Media · Tagged With: , ,

Four Ways to Use Social Media to Build Your Personal Brand in the Nonprofit Sector

November 2, 2011 by · 1 Comment

This post is part of my ongoing Social Media 101 series to encourage leaders to learn more about social media and use it effectively in their life and work.

“Brand yourself for the career you want, not the job you have.” – Dan Schawbel

One of the things Trista and I talk about a lot in our book, How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar: 50 Ways to Accelerate Your Career is the importance of establishing a great personal brand in your nonprofit career. If you’re having trouble landing that dream job or leadership opportunity, it may be because your personal brand needs some work! The good news though, is that in our evolving digital world, there are infinite opportunities to build a reputable name for yourself in your field - online.

This post explains the basic concept and origins of personal branding. Below, I go a bit deeper to share a few ideas for how you might begin to use the four main social media tools to accelerate your nonprofit career. How can you deliberately grow your professional network and become known as the “go-to” person in your field using blogging, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn?

Start Blogging

Blogging offers a powerful entry point for anyone who wants to gain greater visibility in the nonprofit industry. In my experience, blogging is hands down, the very best social media tool to use in building your personal brand. It gives you a platform to talk about your expertise and experience. No, not bragging, but simply showing people that you have something meaningful to offer to the field. Blogging also showcases your writing skills, social media savvy, and utter brilliance to your colleagues and future employers.

If you don’t have a blog yet, you can get one now for the low, low price of $0! Sign up at Blogger or WordPress to get a free blog set up and start writing about nonprofit issues that you care about. Or even better, get a more professional-looking self-hosted blog through Bluehost (the web host that I use). For more in-depth blogging advice, download my free 37-page ebook, The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Blog. Geared toward newbie bloggers, this easy-to-read guide will take you from soup to nuts in terms of your blog concept, software, design, content, promotion and analytics.

Further reading:

Create a LinkedIn Profile

If you’re seeking to build your personal brand in the nonprofit world and you’re not on LinkedIn, you’re missing out on a TON of connections and opportunities. It’s an easy way to get your name ranked favorably in Google search as well as an avenue to meet other nonprofit leaders in your community. LinkedIn is also great for getting the attention of hiring managers and headhunters as 86% of recruiters use social media to research applicants.

Once you join LinkedIn, be sure to fill in your profile completely with a picture, your resume and your bio. To really use the site to its full potential, join some LinkedIn groups associated with the nonprofit industry. I recommend joining the following LinkedIn Groups to build your nonprofit network as well your personal brand: Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, Commongood Careers and The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Further reading:

Get On Twitter

A lot of nonprofit folks are still skeptical about why they should be on Twitter, but as someone with almost 14,000 Twitter followers, I’ve learned a lot about navigating this tool for my own networking purposes. If you’re not on Twitter yet, get an account here and use your real name as your username. Using your real name makes it easier to associate that name with your personal brand as well as the unique value and expertise you bring to the sector. If your name is already taken as a handle (or is too long), you can always use a variation, or even a combination of your industry and your name, such as @nonprofitnicole. Right away, you know she works in nonprofits and her name is Nicole. Brilliant! (And yes, if you’re using a weird username right now, you can go ahead and change it without losing followers. Go here to learn how.)

After that? Get to know thought leaders in the field like @robertegger. I love how Robert uses Twitter to share his thoughts as a nonprofit CEO and a courageous advocate for change in the sector. You should also keep up with the latest nonprofit news and trends by following @Philanthropy (Chronicle of Philanthropy) and @npquarterly (Nonprofit Quarterly). Then? Set aside tine to tweet at least a few times every day to establish your personal brand and market yourself as a resource in whatever your nonprofit expertise might be. If you share what you know, people will begin to respect you as a professional, regardless of your age or years of experience in the field.

Further reading:

Develop a Facebook Presence

With almost a billion people on Facebook now, the site represents a huge pool of potential folks to promote your personal bran (as well as your blog). But if you’re like me and you don’t want your readers to friend you on your personal Facebook profile, you can create a “page” instead where people can keep up with your blog updates. I started a Facebook page for my blog about two years ago and I’ve been able to use it to connect with my readers and share updates from not only my own blog, but posts from other bloggers in the nonprofit field as well.

Ready to start? Go here to create a Facebook page for yourself. Use one of the following categories for your page: “Artist, Band or Public Figure” (author, writer, public figure, business person) OR “Brand or Product” (website). Next, link to your Facebook page from your blog so people can keep up with your updates. For extra credit, install the Networked Blogs application (it’s free!) to automatically pull in your blog posts to your Facebook wall. Again, your ultimate goal here is to use your Facebook page to build a vibrant community around your personal brand, so stay consistent on your page by posting links, questions, quotes and articles related to the nonprofit sector.

Further reading:

What are some other ways you’ve been able to use social media to build your personal brand online?

Wanna learn more about personal branding? Purchase your copy of my popular 90-minute webinar training, Personal Branding 101: How to Use Social Media to Accelerate Your Career.

Filed Under: Career Advice, Personal Branding, Social Media · Tagged With: , , , , ,

How to Use Twitter to Connect Your Organization’s Brand with Your Own

April 13, 2010 by · 6 Comments

Young nonprofit professionals often express reluctance in building their personal brands because they don’t want to “overshadow” the work of their organization. They feel that since they’re in the nonprofit sector to help others, it shouldn’t be all about them. Well, I’ll show you how you can do both! Let’s look at a great example of this with Andrea Snyder from the Grants Collection at the Pratt Library in Baltimore. Andrea represents her organization using Twitter. And I’d say she’s definitely doing it right.

@Grants_Pratt

Her avatar

Andrea’s avatar shows her face bordered by the logo for the Grants Collection. Pretty neat, and makes it clear who she represents: a real person who works at the Pratt Library. It also helps that her photo is all smiles. Andrea looks like a friendly person, someone you would want to see when you come to the Library.

Her bio

Andrea Snyder from the Grants Collection: Nonprofit Resource Center at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, MD. Andrea uses her real name in her bio, not a generic organizational name. She could’ve just put Pratt Library in the name section of the Twitter profile, but by doing it this way, followers can put a name to the face.

Another way that Andrea connects both her organization’s brand with her own is with what and how she tweets. She utilizes four great techniques on her organization’s Twitter profile: information sharing, awareness building, organizational promotion and personality.

Information Sharing

Awareness Building

Organizational Promotion

Personality

Are you on Twitter as part of your work for your organization? How have you been able to connect your personal brand with your organizational brand through social media? What challenges have you faced?

Filed Under: Personal Branding, Shine While Your Light's On, Social Media · Tagged With: , , , ,

Six Ways to Use Twitter to Enhance Your Nonprofit Career

December 15, 2009 by · 8 Comments

Last week, during my personal branding series for young nonprofit leaders, I asked you dear readers, how has Twitter helped you in your nonprofit career? I received six awesome success stories I want to highlight for you here. If you aren’t convinced by now about the value of Twitter as low-cost professional development, I just.don’t.get.you. If you’re ready to jump on Twitter after reading this post, check out my easy, breezy guide to getting started!

1. Elisa: Get Noticed

Twitter has definitely helped my career! It has helped me build my knowledge base on nonprofit best practices, resources and technology which has allowed me to contribute intelligently to conversations within the office and provide evidence to back up my statements. In the last couple of places I’ve worked, I’ve also been one of the first people to find out about late breaking news or important new resources that have just come out relevant to our work. Both of these things have helped me build my ‘clout’ within the office and made me a more indispensable employee.

During my latest job search Twitter definitely helped me get noticed. I was asked about my Twitter feed during a job interview and asked to provide some opinions on the use of social media within nonprofits. Being able to demonstrate a level of experience and knowledge helped me land that job.

Finally, on a slightly more personal level that has professional implications, I’ve developed some good relationships with nonprofit movers and shakers (including many of the people you included in your top 30 list Rosetta) and all around cool people on Twitter. Those relationships have come in handy when I needed some support and I know they will again in the future; and I hope that I’ve been able to provide some of that support back to people.

2. Mary Jane: Become an Expert

Twitter has helped me discover reasearch papers, management articles, and news pertaining to my field across the country, all of which have impressed the hell out of my boss, who can’t figure out how I’m so “on top” of things ;) Now I’m the “twitter tracker” for my agency, producing a summary of the best content found throughout the day in a “Today on Twitter” email. Using Twitter has also given my boss insight on what my interests are (nonprofit management, nonprofit boards), which gets me taken seriously when we talk about my career path.

3. Joe: Tell Your Story

I work as a counselor for the Grande Prairie Youth Emergency Shelter Society (GPYESS) which operates an emergency shelter (www.sunrisehouse.ca) in Grande Prairie, Alberta Canada. We help youth who are at-risk and homeless by providing emergency housing and emergency services.

Since I have started using twitter, I have developed relationships with people in the local community and all over Canada and the world. Twitter has allowed me to spread the word about how amazing our youth are.. It has also allowed me to educate about youth issues, and youth homelessness. Twitter provides a way for business, individuals, and donors to donate to help our youth. People have donated from all over the province! Twitter is a great tool for our organization.

We have had people donate cookies, clothes, and money because of twitter. As we fundraise almost 80% of our entire budget, every bit helps.

Twitter is awesome, and will continue to help and make great realtionships for our non profit

4. Michael: Connect With People in Your Field

Twitter allows me to have a volunteer consultancy of hundreds of people! If I have a problem that I need input on, I can ask the twitterverse, and get an answer that I may have never thought of on my own. The best part is the broad range of ideas I get from people in similar, and not-so-similar, situations!

Through contacts I’ve made on twitter, I’ve been able to plan a nonprofit conference in the city I live in that will get nonprofit leaders in the same room and talking to each other so they can effectively share resources instead of continuously reinventing the wheel. All of the speakers at the conference are connections that I’ve made on twitter, and they’ve donated their time because they love the idea and the city that they live in.

Twitter has allowed me to do things that I wouldn’t have been able to without the connections that I’ve made through it.

5. Krista: Increase Productivity

Twitter has helped my professional development immeasurably since I joined about a year ago. Twitter puts me in daily contact with the best and brightest thought leaders in the nonprofit world as well as in human resources. Here are some ways I have learned, grown or found value as a result of my Twitter activity and contacts:

I was invited to join a human resources group I never would have heard of otherwise. This group’s listserv offers indispensable and almost immediate help when needed.

I attended an HR Blogging unconference I learned about on twitter. There, I met lots of big names in HR blogging, some of whom work at nonprofits and all of whom are useful contacts and great people.

My own blogging activity has increased, and I have a list of people I can tweet if I need technical advice. Being involved in twitter allowed me to write posts like this one: ny.cc/GAPdG

On Twitter, I asked for recommendations for free systems to track resumes. Responses led me to two different online systems I put into place at my nonprofit, eliminating tons of paper and increasing efficiencies.

I have been named on other people’s blogs as being knowledgeable about workplace issues, which is good for me personally but also good exposure for my nonprofit.

I became acquainted with the Rosetta Thurman blog, which is an awesome resource. :)

I’ve been able to stay up on trends, news, happenings in a way I couldn’t before.

Most of the above would have taken much longer or wouldn’t have happened at all without Twitter. Without question, it has been the single best tool for personal and professional growth that I’ve come across in my decades in the workplace.

6. Charise: Participate in the Community

I believe many nonprofit professionals question the value of Twitter and have yet to see explanation of how and why it’s a powerful professional development resource.

Ten months ago I was a huge “Twitter skeptic”. After only a month, I began to see that Twitter is a great tool for the over tasked, under resourced nonprofit professional.

My takeaways from Twitter are almost too numerous to list & include many already named by others, but here are a few more:

Like many nonprofit professionals, I live and breathe for my cause, but also have a vision of a nonprofit sector that breaks the existing silos dampening innovation and networking efforts. Participating in Twitter is a convenient, free way to strengthen our “community benefit” sector.

Working at a smaller nonprofit can be lonely & frustrating due to the lack of a leadership team. Knowing that other professionals share similar challenges is consoling. Even more important, sharing solutions builds morale & hope. Twitter allows nonprofit professionals be a part of a larger, non-exclusive community on a daily basis.

As a community of voices, Twitter allows for quick identification of trends in the nonprofit workplace. This has helped me become more focused in my career goals as I was able to identify needs in the sector that weren’t being effectively addressed and translate this information into applications for competitive fellowships.

Twitter is one of the few places where nonprofit professionals are judged primarily on the quality and value of information they share, instead of age, race, gender, or location. Connections and dialogue are formed on Twitter that one might never see in the real workplace.

Although nothing replaces the value of a mentor, nonprofit professionals in search of guidance or mentoring will often find in Twitter a warm community of professionals ready & willing to offer advice & tips at anytime of the day or night. I know I have!

Twitter rocks.

What’s your take? If you’re not on Twitter yet, why not? If you are using Twitter, do you think you’re using it effectively? Have some success stories of your own to share? Post them in the comments!

Photo credit: Volusion

I’m blogging every single day this month for 31 Days of Giving to celebrate my 27th birthday on December 31 and asking all my friends to donate $27 to benefit the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network of Washington DC. Will you give? Your gift would really make a difference for young nonprofit leaders in DC!

Filed Under: Personal Branding, Professional Development, Social Media · Tagged With: , , , ,
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