Why Everyone Needs To Define Their Role In A Social Network
Apr 29th, 2009 by David Svet
My first acting role was playing Walter Winchell in a 4th grade musical. I had no idea who Walter Winchell was — I was a 4th grader in the 1960s and Winchell was a radio gossip reporter during the 1930s – 50s. Even though my dad was a newspaper columnist and tried to explain it to me, I was clueless. The scary part is that I didn’t care. I had a speaking part, I was onstage by myself, and I had my name in the program. During the show I delivered my lines with gusto completely oblivious to the fact that I had no idea who I was portraying or why he was important to the story. My classmates cheered wildly. The parents clapped politely. I remained oblivious — a hero in my own mind.
How often do we take the time to step back from what we are doing and examine our role? We define our roles at home, albeit sometimes loosely. We define our roles at work, sometimes to an extreme. What about our role in a social network?
Given how we go on about building a social networks and using social media to engage people, maybe we should look at the role each of us plays in our organization’s community building strategy. Depending on your goals, there can be a lot of roles to fill. Formalizing who will fill each of the roles and why they need to be filled will go a long way to making your efforts a success.
Who will tell your story? Is it the leader as Steve Jobs is to Apple? Is it a celebrity, or perhaps a child who’s benefited from your services? Defining this role is critical as it gives you a touchstone to point out to followers.
Are you an evangelist promoting the community to the unaware? Perhaps you are a recruiter, sizing up new followers to figure out whom to connect them with in the organization so that they quickly become engaged in your onboarding process. Maybe you’re a mentor who teaches new initiates the ways of the organization, or a sage who preserves and shares your community’s history. Are you a fundraiser making the ask or a host making initiates comfortable?
Mapping out the roles, even if you have to take on all of them yourself, will make your community easier to join. It will remove the mystery and confusion that can make social situations awkward and unclear. I know a lot of people will tell you to just do it. Jump in, there’s nothing to be afraid of, social media is fast and we don’t want to miss out. That may be true. Or you may be met with the same tepid reception as my oblivious portrayal of Walter Winchell.
You bring up an interesting point about defining roles while engaging in the process of building communities. I myself essentially dove in blind at the onset..started figuring things out on my own, sending my feelers out there and following those whom I thought would give me some form of guidance, going thru a TON of material, etc. But the die-hard filtering doesn’t happen till about 3 months into it. And when THAT happens and you’ve found your voice and determined what hat/hats you want to put on to build (or be part of building) communities, THEN it dawns on you just how critical it is to know what role(s) you choose to play. And yes, it is a choice, which makes your decisions even more viable/sustainable.
Always great to come across industry professionals with styles of expressing views on social media to which I can relate.
Keep up the great thoughts! Autom
I agree on given roles. I also believe this must be the same thought process when thinking about your career. You need to know what type of position you are looking for and trying to get there.
For me, I have several different roles in social media. At my day job, my role is the eCommunity administrator and social media advocate, helping people learn how to use our internal social network for their professional lives and helping the association step into new social spaces. That role comes natural, as I’m a life-long learner at heart and educator by trade. Similarly, my role in other social media spaces is constantly evolving from sometimes storyteller, sharer of information, provocateur, critic, consultant, listener, leader, and follower. It changes from situation to situation as I allow it to unfold and grow.