I’m a prolific blogger, video maven, twitter lover and chat junkie. I also like to attend conferences, parties, barcamps, Tweetups, you get it. I’m a networker. I believe that has a lot to do with recruiting people (since I meet a lot of them through allll these mediums). Anyway, as I “put myself out there” both F2F and on the NET, I’ve noticed (and I’m not the first) that there are whole set of standards that apply at parties that you can apply to the wild, wild west of social media.

Most of these I’ve learned the hard way, BTW. I’ve bulleted them for ease of reading:

• Don’t be lame – Hopefully, you don’t go to office parties or even conferences and talk about nothing but work. If you do, please don’t come to any parties where I’m holding court. Yes it’s important to “push out” what you’re working, relevant links to industry buzz, etc. But if that’s all you do it’s akin to being Rain Man at the company BBQ.
• Say it with me. Discretion. Just as you wouldn’t share you bathroom habits to possible clients, don’t share them on Twitter or FriendFeed. I use the belt rule. If it has anything to do with things below my belt, I don’t tweet it, even foot tweets. Because no one wants to hear about your feet.
• Listen. I loathe (and the rest of the web does too) people who jump on the “newest thing” and use it solely as a distribution channel. It’s so inauthentic. If you went to a dinner party and talked the whole time with your mouth full and never let anyone else get a word in edgewise, you wouldn’t get invited to that many more parties. Your loss.
• SHUT it. At first glance this may seem like the same as listen. It’s not. For example, since my “followers” consist of some social media folks, some HR and recruiter folks, some local folks and my church friends, there are very few times when Twitter is appropriate as a “live-tweeting” tool. For 1/2 my followers, seeing me update literally every minute or two from the Recruiting Roadshow in Minneapolis was too much. It would be similar as listening to your sister in law talk about her time in the teen beauty pageant. You don’t care and every time she brings it up you care less.

Say “you’re grounded”, to yourself. There are people that matter and people that matter. Social Media (especially in the heady honeymoon period when you’re connecting with everyone and their brother that you never thought would give you the time of day) is not real life. It can often be (wisely) backed-up by real relationships but like actual parties, there will be loud talkers, debators, bullies and victims. Don’t worry about them, unlike when you are at a party, you can “delete”!

Submitted by Maren Hogan for the August 2008 Talent Buzz blog contest.