Source: Mark Twain Posters from Sloshpot

It’s always fun to come up with rules to live by that no one follows. I’m sure you can provide your own examples. My personal favorite is exercising 30 minutes per day. Sure, I’d love to do that but…something gets in the way. I’m grateful to get 30 minutes a day every other day, if that. I like Mark Twain’s approach….

In the meantime, consider this list of lessons San Antonio ByLine Blog came up with:

My lesson for today is don’t wait.
• Don’t wait until the bad news hits major news media.
• Don’t wait until you have all the facts straight.
• Don’t wait until you know who is saying what.
• Don’t wait until you have got the permission from legal.
• Don’t wait until you are an expert in social media.

In my experience with organizations, K-12 education as well as non-profits, the truth is that no one wants to take action on this advice. Let’s take them one by one:

Don’t wait until the bad news hits major news media. Following this lesson implies that you know what the bad news is before it hits news media. Sometimes, you do have a short time period before it comes out on evening TV news or ends up in a newspaper, but the real reason that you don’t want to wait for bad news to hit is that you want to disseminate the information to your own network of people. This implies that you have a network in the first place! If you don’t have that network of people–for example, I have 1400 on my blog, and hopefully another 1400+ via Twitter, not to mention the use of keywords–so I can hit most of Texas and the blogosphere with my own version of what happened, or better yet, what actually happened.

That’s a relationship that takes time to build and cultivate, not just in the sense of getting people to trust you but finding out whether you can trust yourself and what you write.

Don’t wait until you have all the facts straight. This certainly goes without saying. In a time when anyone can be a citizen-journalist, and correct your online version of information, it makes sense to be open and transparent about what you DO KNOW, and what you don’t and invite correction. The problem is, it’s possible that some would rather leave you in ignorance than correct you. After all, if you went through the trouble of writing it, might as well let it stand until others tear it down…and since tearing down can have negative repercussions, better to let someone else do it. Yet, publishing the facts, your bias on them, is important.

Don’t wait until you have got the permission from legal. Come on, be honest…if you have a legal department censoring everything you say or not, NOTHING will get written or shared. And, since your job is dependent on the continuuing goodwill of the organization’s leaders–the same people who have to grant you “permission”–this just won’t work. If you have to ask for permission, you might as well hang it up.

Better to write in a slightly alternate field than your own. Don’t take the dog to potty in your backyard, take him to the park or something.

Click image to watch video via The Echo Chamber

Don’t wait until you are an expert in social media. I don’t believe in experts in social media, I just think there are people adept at manipulating our perceptions of their expertise. Go read ClueTrain Manifesto, learn to use the tools and begin sharing with openness and transparency.

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure