Felicia Slattery: Are You Making This Common Communication Mistake on Social Media?

Hello. My name is Felicia Slattery and I’m addicted to Words With Friends. It’s been about 12 hours since my last move.

At any given time I could have 10-15 games going at once. Interestingly, I’ve only met about half the people I play in person. The other half I know from social media. People see I play, and start a game with me. If I recognize the name of the person from my circles of online connections, I accept and it’s game on.

One of those connections is the lovely and strategic WWF player (that’s my abbreviation for “Words With Friends”), Tracey Thorpe Tarrant.

Tracey is a fantastic person. From her Facebook feed, you quickly learn she is beyond your run-of-the-mill animal-lover. She’s such a devoted rescuer of pets from high-kill shelters, she actually formed her own rescue organization, Claws and Paws Animal Rescue, of which she is the CEO. She saves many animals from too-soon deaths and too-sad lives in the Georgia county where she lives.

Yesterday, my friend Shannon Cherry was commenting on Facebook about how her search for a new Virtual Assistant was yielding some less-than-ideal results, at least with one applicant.

As you can see, that led to a whopping 37+ comments about virtual assistants. A few of those comments were from some who could do the kind of work Shannon needs. And one of those people was my friend Tracey Thorpe Tarrant, the “dog rescue lady!” – and apparently Virtual Assistant and Online Business Manager. Who knew? Not me. And I am her market.

I told her I had no idea that she did customer service work for businesses like Shannon’s and mine. All this time I figured she was living off the dog rescue business (if that’s even possible).

She quickly commented that she should maybe, once in a while, post about her business. I agree!

Then I asked her if it’d be OK for me to write a blog post about this simple mistake so many people make when networking online (or using one of the many games apps to do so as well).

It’s interesting because I see mistakes at both ends of this spectrum. Some people don’t post enough (or at all) anything work-related but others post way too much, and only work-related things – never anything personal.

The trick to social media, and any networking online or offline, is to communicate the whole of who you are as a person. This whole person communication is one of the most beautiful parts of social media, as far as I’m concerned. Because we are in charge of sharing what we choose about our lives, we get to easily build relationships around a number of things we have in common with others, bit business and pleasure.

Choose wisely.

Knowing what to talk about and what to leave out can be a challenge. But think of social media as a platform where people want to get to know you a bit. The WHOLE you – business as well as personal.

There is a similar mistake I see a lot of entrepreneurs and experts making; not necessarily leaving out or not talking about what they do for a living, but that they also do (or want to do) speaking for their ideal audiences. If people don’t know that you offer a particular service like public speaking, how can they hire you for it? So many of my clients come to me asking for help, and that’s one of the places I always start. It’s likely they haven’t even mentioned in their bio or about page or anywhere that they do public speaking on their area of expertise.

Want to be sure you’re not making any more common communication mistakes? Pick up my free report Costly Communication Blunders today.

In the meantime, I’d love to know what kinds of things you like to talk about on social media? Please share in the comments below.