When the popularity of the World Wide Web exploded in the late 1990s and every individual and organization decided they each needed a web site, requests abounded for link exchanges:<\/p>\n
I’ll link to your web site if you will link to mine.<\/em><\/p>\n At first, it was an always-say-yes proposition. But nonprofit organizations in particular realized quickly that it wasn’t a good idea to link to anyone<\/em> who asked: what if the request was from a corporation engaged in activities that went against the mission of the nonprofit? or if the request came from an individual who had material on his or her web site that insults particular groups of people, or encourages people to break the law? Many organizations developed web link policies<\/strong>; for instance, a nonprofit would link to a web page only if its content was directly<\/em>, obviously related to the mission of the organization.<\/p>\n Now, the popularity of online networking sites permeates our culture, with everyone, including many nonprofits, in a rush to build up their online profiles on various platforms and to build a high number of online friends<\/em>. But is it really appropriate for you to accept every<\/em> invitation to connect to your profile on an online networking site?<\/p>\n It’s not only your nonprofit that needs to think strategically its online networking presence<\/a> – you<\/strong>, as a volunteer or employee at a nonprofit organization, need to think about the purpose of your own online networking as well. If you link to anyone, anytime, on any platform, with no criteria for what connections mean to you, don’t be surprised if you find yourself over time lacking motivation to network online, as linking becomes mechanical instead of influential, without any meaning behind your connections. Your links become just numbers, rather than real connections to with which to share and collaborate.<\/strong><\/p>\n LinkedIn<\/a> is a professional networking site. My Linkin connections are real<\/em> connections: they are current and former co-workers and clients, volunteers I’ve supervised or worked with, people who have attended a workshop I’ve presented, classmates, and various other people I’ve worked with in such a way that I would be able to say something about them, people whose work I’m very familiar with, or people who are familiar with my work. That keeps LinkedIn connections of real value to me<\/strong>, rather than the online equivalent of a stack of business cards. My connections can view each other and know that these aren’t just a long list of names and email addresses I have no real connection to — these are my colleagues<\/em>, in every sense of the word, and my colleagues are welcomed to leverage my connections for their own professional reasons.<\/p>\n By contrast, I’m not always comfortable with professional colleagues and fellow volunteers wanting to connect to me via social networking profiles. Do I really want former supervisors to get regular, automatic updates about my vacations, political causes with which I’m involved, and which Buffy: The Vampire Slayer <\/em>character I’m most like? Of course, with sites like Google<\/a>, it’s quite easy for anyone, including potential employers, to find out just about anything about anyone – but, IMO, there’s a difference in being able to find information about me if you go looking for it and are willing to dig awhile, versus getting an automatic electronic update about my political views.<\/p>\n Consider developing your own linking policy for your online networking activities – both those you do as an organization and those you do as an individual. What do you want your links on professional sites like LinkedIn<\/a> to see about you, versus your connections on make-a-difference networks like Change.org<\/a>, versus your online social networking on FaceBook<\/a>? There have never been absolute lines in our lives where work and volunteering ends and social activities begin, of course, and you will always have gray areas, but it’s still worth thinking about, to keep your online connections true<\/em> connections, with some kind of real<\/em> value to them.<\/p>\n When you say no to an online connection, consider offering an alternative. For instance, to people who ask to link to me on Linkedin whom I don’t know, I offer the alternative of getting to know each other online professionally, inviting the person to:<\/p>\n As I’ve said many times before, the biggest value from the Internet is, and has always<\/em> been, the ability to connect<\/span><\/strong> with people interested in an area similar to what you are interested in, and to be able to collaborate<\/span><\/strong> with and learn from these people no matter where you are on Earth. But when I say connect<\/span><\/strong><\/em>, I don’t mean just marking someone as a connection on LinkedIn<\/a> or as a friend on FaceBook<\/a> or whatever. When I want to actually connect<\/em> with someone online:<\/p>\n This does lead to real<\/em> connections — people I end up collaborating with, recommending to others, co-presenting with, even working with or for, or hiring.<\/p>\n And one more thing: accept that there are two yous. Maybe even three yous. Maybe even more.<\/p>\n There is your professional, public you<\/em><\/strong>: the one that works at such-and-such company, went to such-and-such university, serves on such-and-such board of directors, lives in such-and-such city and uses your first and last name in your emails and online profiles, etc. This is the you<\/strong><\/em> that is easy to find by co-workers, potential employers, even the media. The public you<\/em><\/strong> is the one that comes up in the first pages of a Google<\/a> search.<\/p>\n There is also your personal you<\/em><\/strong>: the one that engages in activities you wouldn’t necessarily want all of your co-workers or potential employers to know about in a readily-easy manner, the one that writes Harry Potter<\/em> fan fiction, the one that is overtly politically-opinionated, and doesn’t use your first and<\/em> last name in your emails and online profiles, etc. These activities may be easy to find online, but aren’t so easy to associate with you by co-workers, potential employers or the media even if they find it, because you don’t use your full first and last name, because you don’t list the city where you are, because you never mention your employer, etc.<\/p>\n You have to decide where each of your activities, online or offline, fall among these two — or more — yous.<\/p>\n Maybe you want to keep your volunteering activities and books you’ve read and so on in your personal you<\/em><\/strong> online activities. Or maybe you want to share even more in your public you<\/em><\/strong> profiles. The point is: you have control of the information you share online<\/strong>. Be deliberate, or at least thoughtful, in what you share and how you share information.<\/p>\n Tags<\/strong>: communications, personal, private, outreach, networking, connections, friends, connect, network, volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, volunteerism, social, business When the popularity of the World Wide Web exploded in the late 1990s and every individual and organization decided they each needed a web site, requests abounded for link exchanges: I’ll link to your web site if you will link to mine. At first, it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[568,650],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-relationsoutreach","tag-ethics","tag-social-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3fFJB-3H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5627,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions\/5627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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