Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Is Social Media Boxing Us In?

After reading the great article, Top 5 Reasons To Tweet, a few discussions about this with my husband, and months to mull this over without a chance to sit down and write (thanks, baby girl!), I'm left with a question.

How does today's 20-something market himself in a world that (in my opinion) hasn't caught up?  Social media marketing repeatedly requires someone to sum himself up in a one-liner.  Which, for my grandfather, for instance, would have been easy.  Expert maritime lawyer.  Done.  But today, we're not so willing to sum ourselves up--most people I know are more interested in developing a variety of often totally unrelated interests.

Take, for instance, my friend Faryn's Twitter profile (she's funny for money, so this has to be): "One ninth of the sketch comedy group Harvard Sailing Team. One half of the baking co. Fanny & Jane. One third of a casting team. So-so at fractions."


My point exactly.

So how would I sum myself up?

I could go from my professional side and pick: elementary school teacher or website producer.
I could go from the family side and write about being a wife and/or young mother.
I could go from the spiritual side and brand myself based on my interest in Torah learning and Jewish philosophy.

I doubt anyone is looking to find a tweeter with that particular combination, but I'm loathe to drop any one of them.  I'd like to develop each into an expertise over time, and while I don't need to tweet about the progress Adina is or isn't making with her crawling, I do think that being a work-at-home mom involves its own challenges, and Twitter is a great place to get support and ideas.  Obviously continuing to work on the internet and hopefully becoming more of an expert in website development and design lends itself well to Twitter.  And if, though this is far-fetched, I ever get my act together to start putting together regular classes or blogs on Jewish thought, that is something I would certainly want to share.

Does/did anyone else have this issue?

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