Notorious B.I.G. obviously meant FaceBook Google+ MySpace. (Not Really)
I left MySpace up there for theatrics but I think the
aforementioned picture describes it best: there is no greater outlet to elicit
ones persona then by SMSing, Social Media Stalking. Our persona Kristin is novice compared to
today’s average social media user having only established an active Facebook
account, an inactive twitter account, and having never populated a LinkedIn
profile. Still, logged out or in from my
Facebook account I am able to understand the push/pull persona of Kristin.
1. Q:
What information would you try to elicit? It’s rather easy
to understand the self-projected persona Kristin portrays through her Facebook
profile Picture. #SingleWhiteFemale #HavingFun.
Fedora hat, Zoolander “Blue
Steel” Pose, all of which provide instantaneous qualitative insights to her
persona. The harder question to answer
is “Is this the Real Her?” Ironically
enough that question is posed by her favorite artist Drake in the hit “Real Her” which ranks first on her list of
favorite musicians. A quick glance
through her “info” section and you notice trends that sums up who she is:
a. Classic
yet cliché quotes like "a true friend is someone who reaches for your hand
and touches your heart" and "Live as if
you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever," infused
with romantic movies like The Notebook” finishing
with favorite sports and relationship status; “Single.” The difficult part isn’t ascertaining what
Kristin wants us to understand about her, it’s adjusting for persona validity. With only one direct open source platform the
data set for understanding the accuracy to our personas social media
consumption habits is poor. Still, the
show must go on. Insert: Google Search!
2.
Q:
How would you get at that information in a way that would be most accurate and
telling? A thorough Google search is, unfortunately, the greatest
metric to delineate a person’s persona; good (push) or bad (pull).
a. Push: My persona created her
profile, populated with what she wants people to see and its up to the consumer
to dictate if this is appealing or not. For social media platforms she’s only
pushed out a Facebook profile and from that is all I can reason who her persona
is.
b. Pull:
My favorite metric from a raw Google search tells me what you’ve done to gain
notoriety, good or bad. Kristin’s Google
search elicits the former. Presently a
very active member in her community as a volunteer assistant coach at a local
college the majority of the page is filled with accolades from her time as a
Division 1 soccer star. Matching what
she said in person to her Facebook profile to my Google search and so far her
persona is valid.
In sum:
The relative lack of social media outlets from our Persona likely has the
opposite affect Kristin was hoping for. By merely channeling herself via Facebook and
only Facebook we create this funneled bias that we know everything we need to
know about her. Jogging back to the
title picture there is an art to actively maintaining more than one, two, or
three social media platforms. First, it
gives you more channels to present your persona for push (Facebook) and for
pull (LinkedIn or Identified.com) purposes on your own terms. The first question career services posed to
my Consortium class prior to The Consortium (an organization consisting of 18
top tier MBA programs with the goal of increasing the number of
underrepresented minorities in business) is “Do you have a LinkedIn
profile.” This the easiest form of
“pull” flattery and Kristin is obviously missing this boat. Secondly, it allows you to absorb critique
from different networks in order to creating a better you. For instance, those active on twitter can
read up to date “no go’s” for social media on sites like The Thought Catalog,
or blogs from ESPN’s Sports Guy’s renowned site Grantland. Having a stable grasp of these social
networks is like having that “WTF Friend.”
That’s the best friend that will tell you “WTF are you thinking” when
you step out of the house wearing Jhorts when it's 43 degrees outside! This guy obviously doesn’t have that friend!
#socialmediaproblems
Hey Carlos, You make some good points in this blog entry. This is pretty telling for Kristin but seems time consuming for just one person. If there isn’t already, it would be nice if there was a technology that aggregated people’s social media pages to compare/contrast without a manual Google search. Good job.
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