Social Networking 202 - Style

You either have style or you don’t and if you have to think about it,  uh, you don’t.

 That is is how the saying goes but I beg to differ.

Style is inherent in everything you do whether you are aware of it or not.  Your choice of clothes, is a choice of style, your choice of music is a choice of style.  What you read, who you listen to, whose advice you take, who you marry, what type of work you do.

In writing, style is called your voice or your tone.   In video it’s your presentation or presence.

You may be comfortable with the way you write, communicate via blogs, adding comments to articles. That’s great.  But have you thought about that?  Have you spent time thinking about how you present yourself to your audience or do you just write what’s on your mind?

Style is something very important to consider because it resonates throughout everything you do.

In social networking your style will instantly attract or repel followers/networkers/fans.

Not everyone can get away with What the Buck style of criticizing everything and everyone and yet people are cued up to listen.  How does he do that?  His style.  He is consistently mean in a hilarious way.  He has his own presence and personality.  Love him or hate him, he’s a bit like a car crash.

Do you need to be so flamboyant to get a following?  No.  I love a guy called blunty on youtube and he is as boring as watching paint dry.  He has no presence – at all.  Yet he has content.  He has opinion and he is as his name suggests, blunt about sharing it.  He has a large following because he is consistent in his style.

Sometimes when things get me mad and I want to post something to reflect that, I stop, (a talent I have nearly perfected) and think about how that will reflect on me and is it really my style?  Take for example voting for articles.  It is not my style to give a negative vote.  If I don’t like something I don’t vote for it, but I won’t give it a negative either because that person has put a lot of effort into that article.  They’ve put themselves out there and I won’t kick them in the teeth for doing that.  That takes guts.  Try writing an article and see how courageous you feel if you haven’t done so already.

What is true and common for all the top social networkers is that they have developed their own style and have been CONSISTENT in that style.  You sort of know their attitude to things, even though they may provide content that is a bit out of their stylings – the style in which they present them will be consistent.

Spend time thinking about what style you want to adopt as a social networker.  Do you want to be a guru everyone comes to – then you need a confident style .  Do you want to be the person that everyone invites to applications – then you need a playful style.

How much of your actual true self you reflect in that style is another lesson altogether.  Stay tuned.

Sizzle on

Kath