Currently viewing the tag: "Mommatorial"
Why I told my most supportive fan to delete her Facebook comment.
Confession: my mom is my best friend on Facebook. I’m fine with that. She’s embraced the social network, friended me and leveraged the channel to show, among other things, her relentless and unyielding motherly support.
Whether I’m tagged in a photo, linking to a new blog post or telling a joke, mom is there in a heart beat to Like it, share it and comment on it.
Is it lame that my mom is usually the only person that comments on my content? Yeah, I guess it is. Whatever. There are worse problems in the world than having a mom who’s “too” supportive.
But as much as I appreciate her good intentions, sometimes a comment from mom can cross the line. And on April Fools’ day (of all days) I had to ask her to take one down.
I manage my company’s Facebook page and one of my jobs is to find ways to make what we do fun and engaging. Now, keep in mind that I work at a utility and the word “fun” isn’t always associated with things like price plans and power plants. As you can imagine I try to take advantage of every opportunity to show the lighter side, without getting in trouble.
So when April 1 came around this year, I saw it as one of those chances to have some harmless fun at work. I came up with an idea that poked fun at ourselves a bit while promoting one of our programs.
Given the sensitive nature of the utility industry, the prank was a tad risky, but it felt right. And with the help of a few talented people, and a boss with a sense of humor, I posted this fake news story as a note on our Facebook page.
After it was up, I monitored the comments like a hawk, anxious to see how people would react. The first comment came a mere two minutes after I clicked the “publish” button. It was brimming with praise and included a phrase like, “This made my day!” Guess who it was from.
Momma!
Do you see any problems with this? I did.
I grabbed my phone and pounded out a text message asking her to take it down. The adrenaline was rushing. Thirty seconds later I snatched up my phone again and called her to make sure she’d gotten the message.
She answered the phone, “It’s down.” I could hear the worry in her voice and felt bad for asking her to remove it. I know she had good intentions. I was actually happy that she liked it so much.
Then why would I ask her to remove the comment?
In a word: transparency. I’ll explain.
Facebook comments are a huge component of my profession. They’re one of the variables used to determine whether I’m doing a good job or not.
So when I posted something that would be viewed, shared and criticized by the people I work with, I didn’t want the first (intensely positive and supportive) comment to come from my mom. I saw a conflict of interest there, because of course a mom is going to like and speak positively about the work her son has done.
Thankfully, my mom keeps a pretty level head. She understood that I didn’t react like that out of embarrassment and wasn’t telling her that I don’t appreciate her support. I was trying to maintain the credibility and transparency of the conversation that I was being paid to facilitate.
(I explained later that the more appropriate course of action would have been to share the note with her friends on Facebook, since most of her friends know that I’m her son. That way, she can set the appropriate context.)
Should I have left her comment alone? Do you think I overreacted?
Maybe you think that odds are, nobody would have found out that it she was my mom. And after all, it was a harmless April Fools’ day prank.
But on social media, transparency is vital. And there’s no way I’d be able to pass the red-face test when reporting on the success of the April Fools’ day note, when its most prominent supporter was the writer’s mom.
Nobody likes being asked to remove comments. Understandably so. Commenting is your voice. And the beauty of social media is that it gives your voice more volume and an audience. All of a sudden you’re a restaurant critic, a mystery shopper, a news producer…and people are listening.
But “with great power comes great responsibility.” And it’s up to us to make sure that when the lines get blurry on social media, we act transparently and comment appropriately.
Thanks, Mom, for your support and understanding.
Three more April Fools’ day pranks from 2011 that I loved:
Mommatorials are intended to help my mom (and others like her) understand something, usually social-media or tech related. Read my first Mommatorial: 5 Twitter Fears, Conquered
My mom asked me a while ago to show her how to use social media better. After I rolled my eyes and said something snobby and confusing like, “Well…what do you want from social media?” I realized that it’s a great question for her to be asking.
I sometimes forget that despite the massively over-publicized explosion of Facebook and Twitter users, there are a lot of people who are still unsure of how to get any value out of social media for themselves.
In my Mom’s case, she knows how to find her way around on Facebook, and she has a blog, but Twitter is still a scary, somewhat hairy animal. The more I thought about her question, the more it made me realize that I know a ton of people like her, who are still either afraid or completely unfamiliar with Twitter.
And it’s a shame because if they could all just get over a few initial hurdles, they’d have a much richer social media experience and easier access to information that they would probably find very interesting.
In hopes of getting my mom (and others like her) over these entry barriers and to shed some of the stigmas associated with Twitter for newcomers, here is my first Mommatorial: 5 Twitter Fears, Conquered.
I have nothing to tweet about
So don’t tweet! Big deal! One of the most overlooked functions of Twitter is listening, reading, learning…consuming. Just because you only have three followers and tweet once a month about how you really should be tweeting more often, doesn’t mean you can’t get value out of Twitter. If you don’t have anything to say, then just listen. Don’t worry about growing your audience or creating content. If it really doesn’t matter to you, then your time is better spent checking out all the cool stuff other people are tweeting about. Just read and be happy.
Scary Twitter #Jargon
A major turn-off for many people new to Twitter (aside from the inevitable snarks: “What? Too busy tweeting?” or “You can tweet that!” or “So you’re a Twit…or is it Tweeterer?”) is the appearance of the # and @ and RT symbols inherent with the Twitter conversation. While this does take an open mind and patience getting used to at first…you’ll get it pretty quickly…and it’s nothing to be afraid of. There are countless easy-to-digest tutorials on this subject that can explain infinitely better than I can here. So watch a couple videos and play around with it for a bit. You’ll have it down in a few days, easy.
There are so many people on Twitter. Who should I follow?
Well, I would have to answer your question with a question: What are you interested in? You are interested in stuff, right? Good. No matter what the topic, be it underwater basket weaving, celebrity stalking or just the news…somebody somewhere is posting information about it on Twitter. The people I follow (social media professionals, photographers, utilities, bands, sports reporters, news agencies, local restaurants and bars) are going to be way different than the people my mom is going to follow (Dachsund owners, Crossfit trainers, paleo foodies and Bill O’Reilly). Start off by whittling down your interests and searching for people who are talking about related topics on Twitter.
So mom, sign in to your Twitter account (no, I don’t remember what your username or password are). At the top of the page there is a box that says “Search” in it. Type your topic of interest in that box and press “enter.” Read the stuff that you see and if you like it, follow the person who wrote it. Tada!
If I stop following somebody, will they be sad?
A follower is not necessarily a friend. Don’t associate too much weight with following someone (it’s not like the blood-written binding contract of a Facebook friendship): if you don’t like what they tweet, just stop following them it’s that easy. Which leads me into my next point…
Twitter is annoying. Who cares what people are having for lunch?
Well apparently not you, eh? So if you’re annoyed by somebody because they tweet about how crappy their ham-and-cheese sandwich is, every day, then just stop following them. Part of Twitter’s beauty is the natural selection process. As a reader, you have the power to control the sources of the information that you consume. Use it. Follow tweeters of substance. Go get that value!
A Mommatorial is a post intended to help my mom (and others like her) understand something, usually social-media or tech related. I stumbled across this fun Mom-focused tweetorial earlier today, and it reminded me of this “Mommatorial” series idea I’d been putting off, until now. Google has a website with a similar focus: teachparentstech.org. Twitter has some really cool videos that show what they’re all about. If you just can’t get enough text in your life, here’s lots more info About Twitter.
Tri for Les 2012: Lavaman
