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Microblogging can be intimidating

Anyone considering microblogging in their organisations should read this blog post on the Content Economy blog. In the post the author looks at some of the reasons for microblogging, some of the suggestions include the following:

• "Asking colleagues to help them find information about something, such as a report, method or customer
• Asking colleagues to help them with a problem they have with a specific software, their computer, or something else
• Finding colleagues with a specific skill, experience or knowledge
• Sharing ideas and finding collegues willing and able to help them develop them further"

There are of course many other reasons for using microblogging to communicate and collaborate with colleagues but this is a very good list if you're trying to encourage your firm to look at microblogging.

However the author then goes on to discuss how microblogging can be intimidating. The main reason cited is transparency, as the author discuss in detail in the blog post.

"It all has to do with our fear of transparency. Micro-blogging is a transparent way to communicate, way more transparent than targetet communication methods like email. When micro-blogging, you just have to be a little more careful about what you say and how you say it than when you email people. Email is perceived as "safer" in this respect because it is much less transparent. It allows you to say more sensitive things, assuming that you trust the people that you communicate with (so they don't forward your conversation to other people)"

I couldn't agree more with the points raised by the author, you do have to be careful about what you say and how you say it, because just like emails microblogging posts, tweets or entries can be misunderstood just like email, but potentially you could have a much larger audience.

Full post as published by LI Issues on November 15, 2009 (boomark / email).