Mothers are the conduit of all wisdom.
They know how to mend a scraped knee, a broken heart, and a fractured ego.
And of course – and you knew this was coming – they incidentally have taught us a lot about social media.
In honor of Mother’s Day here are 4 things my mom taught me about social media:
1. Don’t make that face or it’ll freeze in that position.
Any piece of content you launch into social media orbit has the potential to serve as a first impression to someone who doesn’t know who you are or what you’re about.
Each tweet, blog post, Facebook status update, and forum comment is a snapshot frozen in time depicting your point of view at a given moment. Think about the ramifications of that before you press publish.
Any face (or content) you make could freeze in that position. Forever. Just ask Rashard Mendenhall, Gilbert Godfried, or Kenneth Cole.
2. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.
We don’t tend to regret compliments. But we often regret the nasty things we’ve said to someone.
The heat of the moment can cause us to make half-baked, regrettable decisions, like when we respond to a customer complaint on Twitter, find a negative blog post about our organization and let loose in the comments, or disagree with a snarky Facebook post proclaiming that [insert industry/practice/idea] is dead.
Cooler heads prevail, only when you give them time. So before you lash back stop and think: is this statement mother approved?
3. What if everyone jumped off a cliff? Would you do it, too?
Ours is an era of quickly-changing fads and me-too bandwagoning.
Because there are no established ground rules in social media, it’s easy to take a look at what someone in some scenario somewhere is doing and think they’ve got the golden ticket to success and, well, copy them.
But it can often backfire: like following the trend to abandon your website in favor of a Facebook page, or allowing your intern to manage your entire social media campaign.
Just because others are doing it doesn’t make it the right choice.
4. Do things right the first time, so you don’t have to do them over.
Avoid the rush-job. Remember when you wanted to play outside but had to do the dishes first so you sort of mailed in doing the dishes and left sloppy Joe residue on the plates and then mom came out while you were playing to bring you back in and finish the job? Oh wait, that was just me?
It’s tempting to leap into social media action without fully articulating a plan of action with a strategy, measurable goals, and properly allocated resources but it’s exactly what we need to do if we want long term success. Otherwise, we’re just sort of running outside waiting for the moment we get called out. Short term thinking rarely leads to long term success.
It was tough to listen to mom as a kid because there were so many distractions and it didn’t always seem fun, but the world of social media is no different.
So take the advice. Mom would be proud.
What did your mom unknowingly teach you about social media?
[image: emilywaltonjones]
