Showing posts with label Social Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Media. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

An Ethic of Social Media - Part 4

In my last post, I gave my analogy for the world of social media, Twitter in particular. I said that Twitter is like using a megaphone to speak in a very large, very crowded room. This understanding of the nature of Twitter should then inform the ethic that guides our use of Twitter. Last time, I presented the "don't's" that come from this understanding of Twitter. Now, I'll give you a few "do's."

#1 - Do connect with other people in the room. One of the great things about this big room with lots of people in it is that it enables you to develop relationships with lots of people. Use Twitter to connect to people you can learn from, people who can learn from you, people you would like to know better, people in your community, people in the same field of work as you, people engaging in ministries you have a heart for. There are limitless possibilities of people with whom you can connect on Twitter. Twitter should not merely be a place for you to get stuff off your chest. The real value of it is the connections it enables. Now, this doesn't mean you can't be selective. I am. I don't follow everyone that follows me, and I'm not constantly adding new people just to try to get my own follow numbers up. I choose who I want to follow based on the value I think will develop from the relationship.

#2 - Do be real on Twitter. People connect with you on Twitter because they want to get to know you, the real you. Don't just shoot off stuff that sounds like it came from a Hallmark card or a daily devotional. Give people a glimpse into your world, what your daily life is like, what you wrestle with, what joys you have. Twitter is an easy world to wear a mask in, and there are a lot of people who do, but you will get more out of the experience if you take the risk to let others know you for who you are.

#3 - Do use Twitter as a means of encouraging, supporting, and praying for other people. If you will watch Twitter with eyes open to the opportunities to minister to other people, there are a lot of them out there. People often post stuff that you can simply reply to with a "Praying for you." And if you post that, pray right then for them. Don't just say it; do it. Twitter also is an incredible network for discovering a need and responding to that need. If you see someone needs help, and you know a way that you and your network of friends can help, then do it.

#4 - Do use the full functionality of Twitter: @replies, DMs, retweets, Twitter lists. This one is pretty nuts and bolts. Take some time to actually learn how to make the most of Twitter. It will help you avoid some of the "don't's" if you just know how to @reply to a post someone has put up, or to DM someone instead of sending it out for all to read. Retweets enable you to get word out to your network about something you read that you thought was valuable for them to read also. And, Twitter lists or a Twitter client that categorizes tweets for you will help you make your way around the crowded room without just getting a bunch of noise.

#5 - Do tweet regularly. Now, I know that seems in contradiction with one of the "don't's", but there needs to be a balance. You don't need to tweet so much that people get tired of you and turn you off, but you also don't want to tweet so little that people forget you are out there. If you are in a large, crowded room, and all you do is stay on the edge of the room, never talking to anyone, never interacting with anyone, it won't be long before others don't even notice you anymore. Really, about all it takes to do that is one or two tweets a day.

#6 - Do take a break from time to time. Take a Twitter Sabbath every once in a while. Have a day where you are completely unplugged, where you go dark for a while. Sometimes, you need to get out of the room, and invest in relationships in the real world.

#7 - Do engage in real world relationships. It's important to remember that this very large, very crowded room is an imaginary room. As awesome as the world of social media is and as many relationships as it facilitates, we need real relationships with real world people. We need people with flesh and blood and tears and hugs and laughs. We need people with whom we can have more extensive conversations than 140 characters at a whack. We need people who can pick us up when we fall or kick our butts when we are wandering in dark places. Engage in Twitter, but also engage in life.

So, that's my stab at an ethic of social media. I'm sure there are other principles that could be added, but those are the governing principles that I use. Some of them I am more successful at than others, and some of them I am committed to giving more effort to. I hope it helps you. I also hope that you will spend some time thinking through the ethical implications of the social media world for yourself and develop some principles for yourself.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

An Ethic of Social Media - Part 3

My analogy for understanding social media and Twitter in particular is this: Twitter is speaking into a megaphone in a very large, very crowded room. Twitter now has over 100 million users (and Facebook has even more)! If your user profile is open, all of those people have access to anything you post as a tweet or an @reply. Even if your profile is locked, all of your friends have access to everything you tweet. So, to carry through with the analogy, even if you have your profile locked, you are just in a locked room in the very crowded building, and any of your friends are free to leave the room and pass along to others what you have tweeted.

So, that analogy has several implications for our ethic of social media. It informs what we should or shouldn't post, how we should relate to others, and the attitudes we should display on Twitter. So, here are a few ethical principles I have developed based on this analogy of Twitter. I'll give you the "don't's" today, then the "do's" on another day.

#1 - Don't tweet anything you wouldn't want your mother (or father, brother, sister, spouse, fiance, children, best friend, etc.) to hear. Once you tweet something, you have absolutely no control over what happens to it after that in this incredibly crowded room. There's a good chance that your mother is in the room. Even if not, there are plenty of people in the room who may know your mother and pass along to her something you posted on Twitter. We must remember that Twitter is not an isolated conversation. There are millions of people who can pick up on our tweets and pass them along. Your tweet may not make it to your mother, but it could be picked up by someone else you care about and negatively impact their view of you. So, think about the things you say on Twitter. Are you okay with everyone in your life seeing the language you use? the subjects you tweet about? the way you respond to others?

#2 - Don't expect others to respond to everything you tweet. Twitter is a great way of increasing our sense of narcissism. Because there are tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people following us, we think that everyone cares about everything we tweet and have some obligation to respond to our tweets. We get an inflated sense of ourselves and how others should view us. But, we have to remember, that a tweet comes with no strings attached. You should tweet simply because you want to express yourself, but no one in this crowded room has an obligation to respond to what you tweet.

Remember, it is a very crowded room, and there are hundreds, if not thousands of conversations going on every day even in the limited circle of people you follow. I follow about three hundred people on Twitter (a fairly small number for a lot of pastors, but I am kind of selective), and I have about 350 followers. I don't have the time or capacity to keep up with everything everyone says on Twitter in a given day. So, I have an application that allows me to filter and categorize my tweeps so that I don't get just a lot of noise. There are certain people that I "pay more attention to." There are people that I often respond to, and people that I never respond to. Beyond that, I may walk out of the room for several hours. When I come back into the room, I may not catch up on all the conversations that have taken place in the time since I left the room. So, I may not respond to something you posted. It doesn't mean I don't care. It just means that I wasn't in the room when you used the megaphone. If you really care about making sure someone gets the word, send them a DM or actually text them. But don't get upset at people for not responding to your generic tweet.

#3 - Don't be passive aggressive on Twitter. What I mean by that is, don't use Twitter as a means to attack someone, complain about someone, be ugly about someone. Even if you don't mention the person by name, there's a really good chance that some/many/or all of your followers have a really good idea who you are talking about. In this crowded room, there are others who are aware of the situation, and you may be doing damage to your relationship with them, to their understanding of your character, and to your reputation. Additionally, a lot of people use Twitter to "secretly" attack someone who is actually following them on Twitter. That's just not cool. If you have a problem with someone, don't get on the megaphone to complain about them. Talk to them, but don't air it out for all of us to hear, because, quite frankly, we don't want to hear it.

#4 - Don't have arguments on Twitter. This one is closely connected to the former one and is often a result of it. Nobody in a big crowded room wants to hear you fighting back and forth with someone else on a megaphone. If you've got an issue that you are going to fight about, move the conversation to DMs, text messages, or actual real world conversations. Don't air it on the Twittersphere for all to hear. Even if someone else fires a shot at you, be the bigger person and move the conversation to an avenue where you can actually resolve the issue. Again, we don't want to hear it, and it doesn't build other people up. Each of these last two actually do considerable damage to the relationship with the other person and to other people's opinion of you. When you move an argument, disagreement, relationship issue to Twitter, you have opened it up for all the world to see. You have magnified the intensity of the issue by the factor of however many people are listening because you have exposed the issue to hundreds or thousands of people. Here's the general rule of thumb for life: Praise publicly, criticize privately. People always respond better to that simple standard. Besides, Twitter is one of the worst avenues in the world for having an argument. How in the world can you really get to the heart of an issue when you have 140 characters or less? By having an argument on Twitter, you are demonstrating that you don't really care about finding any resolution to this issue. You just want to fire shots at the other person. And that is not a Christlike way to handle problems.

#5 - Don't have lengthy Twitter conversations. My rule of thumb is, if you are having a conversation that just involves you and another person, after about three @replies, it's time to move the conversation to DMs or text messages. Remember, it is a crowded room, and your conversations should be beneficial or engaging to the other people in the room. If you are just having an A-B conversation, and nobody else is engaged in it, move the conversation. If the conversation engages more than one other person, it's probably okay to take it to about 5 @replies. And if there are a large number of people engaging, it's okay to keep it going. If your conversation is of a personal nature (I can't believe so and so did such and such!) or the mundane (Can you pick up a gallon of milk on the way home?), keep it off Twitter.

#6 - Don't be a whiner. It's okay to very occasionally post about something that frustrates you, an issue that you want to champion, things that bug you or get on your nerves. Twitter is a great avenue to do that and see if other people experience the same things and maybe even get some answers for how to deal with it. But, don't be a constant complainer. The other people in the room will get tired of it quickly.

#7 - Don't overtweet. Okay, this one is just a little bit of a pet peeve of mind, but maybe the rest of you are okay with it. In this big, crowded room, if you are constantly on the megaphone, it get's old. Tweet stuff that has some interest, impact, or bearing on your followers. It's okay to tweet where you are eating occasionally or when you are going to the store or that you are going to bed. Just don't do it all the time. If all you are tweeting to me is a running agenda, your schedule for the day, or your current location, I don't care. I guess this is kind of an arbitrary number, but if you are sending out more than 5-7 tweets an hour (not including @replies) you may be guilty of overtweeting.

Okay, well, I guess there are probably some other principles you could come up with based on this analogy, and if you do, please feel free to share them. But for now, that's what I've got. I'll share my "do's" for Twitter in the next post.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

An Ethic of Social Media - Part 2

For the sake of brevity, I'll just say Twitter from here on since that is the form of social media I use most often, but the principles apply to all forms of social media, whichever one you use.

Because Twitter is an electronic media, it may be easy for us to forget that Twitter really is just another form of speech. The words may be in text and they may be delivered via the internet, but it is still speech. So, the same biblical instruction related to how we speak should govern our use of Twitter.

There are two scriptures that have particular bearing on our use of Twitter. Ephesians 4:29 relates to what we post. It says, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." The first question we need to ask before we tweet is, "Is this beneficial to the people who listen?"

Now, granted, there is a lot of room for what can qualify as "helpful for building others up." As a pastor, I often tweet about my normal, day to day stuff. I think it is tremendously beneficial for my people to get to know their pastor as a real person. I also often tweet humorous stuff. I think laughter builds others up, and it is really just an important part of my personality. So, I'm certainly not saying that everything you tweet has to be serious or teaching something life-changing. However, it does mean that the general tone of our tweets should be positive, encouraging, and uplifting. Stay away from negative, mean-spirited, cutting tweets.

The second scripture, Colossians 4:6, relates to how we respond to others: "
Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." Second, ask yourself the question, "Is my response to this person a demonstration of the incredible grace of Jesus Christ that I have received?" I often see people jumping someone else on Twitter. I'll get into more of the details of that particular piece of Twitter ethics later, but simply following this scripture should keep us from doing that. Frankly, some Twitter conversations get very uncomfortable very quickly for everyone else who is "listening." Remember that other people are witnessing your conversations, many of whom are not followers of Jesus Christ. Is the way you respond to other people on Twitter more or less likely to make your pre-Christian followers want to experience the grace of the Christ you profess to follow? Twitter is a social media, so the way you respond to others is very important.

Proverbs 16:28 says, "Gossip separates the best of friends." Although a great tool, Twitter can become one of the largest gossip machines we have ever encountered. Be careful about what you post about other people.

One of my personal favorites is Proverbs 17:28: "Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue." Sometimes the best thing to tweet is nothing at all. I'll confess, I'm not always the best at this. Sometimes I tweet before I think, and that's dangerous. It's probably a good habit to get into to read back over a tweet and pause just a moment before you hit send.

There are a lot of other scriptures related to our speech and the use of the tongue that should govern our tweets, but I'll stop there. Next time, I'll share with you a way of understanding Twitter and how that should inform how we use it.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

An Ethic of Social Media - Part 1

I'm a big fan of social media. I use it to connect with people, make new friends, learn about people's struggles so that I can encourage them and pray for them, reestablish relationships with old friends, communicate with people in my community, and just have a lot of fun. I often encourage people who aren't engaged in social media to give it a try and see the incredible world that is out there.

But social media is an incredibly new phenomenon. Think about it, just ten years ago, email or possibly chatrooms were our greatest exposure to personally connecting with other people on the internet. Today, for many people, it's hard to imagine our lives without Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace or a host of others. "Social media" has become one of the fastest-growing phenomena in American culture. Facebook currently boasts over 400 million users logging 500 billion minutes a month on the site. Twitter, the fastest growing social media site, now has over 100 million users and adds 300,000 new users every day.

As a church planter, social media has become an incredible tool for ministry. I strongly encourage all of our people to connect with me, each other, and the ministries of the church through our Facebook and Twitter presences. We may be one of the most social media connected churches out there (I know, that sentence sounds funny, but social media is so new that there aren't even adjectives to describe it yet.). Over ninety percent of our attenders (I'd guess about 99%) have a Facebook account, and approximately 75% of our people are on Twitter.

We use these outlets to communicate about upcoming stuff in the church, to promote our Sunday services, to remind people of the main points of the message during the week, to distribute information specific to our ministries, to do polls about important topics, and to send out invitations to our friends, just to name a few. Twitter and Facebook are a great way to get information out rapidly to a large percentage of our church members in an incredibly rapid manner. Need to change a meeting time? I can do it in a matter of seconds. Someone facing a crisis? People can find out about it and begin praying quickly. Have a need for a particular ministry? Put it out there for all the Twitter and Facebook world to see.

Twitter and Facebook are also incredible ways to "close the back door of the church." If someone attends our services for the first time and I can connect with them through Twitter or Facebook within a week or two, I can almost guarantee they are going to get plugged in and become an active part of our church.

So, I'm a really big fan.

However, like so often in the past, our use of new technology has outpaced our thinking about that technology, particularly the development of an ethic of social media. How should we relate to others on social media? What should we post or not post on social media? Are there dangers we should be aware of related to social media?

I certainly haven't developed a full ethic of social media, but I've developed a few principles for social media with my use of it fairly extensively over the last three years. I'll share those principles in the next few posts.