When I first decided that I was going to get serious in mastering the tools and tricks of social media, I took the advice of a real expert, Nancy Marmolejo, and joined up two applications: Twitter and Facebook.  This was an important move for productivity (now I can post once and appear multiple times), but as it turns out, it was even more important for another reason.

You see, I’ve had my Facebook account for a year and a half, and have gathered friends – real friends – from just about every period and every aspect of my life.  Do I want to risk alienating my real-life friends by yammering on about my business with every status update?  I don’t think so!  Turns out that my Twitter friends are no different.  Of course I can talk about my work, just as I would in real life.  And if I’m excited about a turn of events or something new I’m trying out, I’ll post it on Twitter (and by extension, myFacebook status).  But if I’m making my post all about me me me, and what I have to sell… my friends devolve into my customers, and my customers never become friends. 

No thank you.

It is possible, though, to post about what I’m up to in my business if it’s just one ingredient in a thoughtful, respectful and positive stream of tweets/status updates.  The other ingredients include actually being interested in what other people are saying, responding to the posts of others, passing on great information… but more about this in my next post, which is on being Reciprocal.

Oh, and guess what?  The 3Rs have now become the 4Rs because when I planned the outline for this series, I actually hadn’t factored today’s post in.  It just flew out of my head and onto the screen.  Call it the wonder of blogs…