Is There A Bright Line Rule for Sharing vs. Oversharing?
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
from merriam-webster.com
As a content creator, I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about sharing ideas and information online. I’ve seen the positive outcomes of information sharing:
- Increased pageviews to one’s blog, web site, marketing collateral
- Continuation of thought leadership - conversations beyond “It’s about the conversation!”
- Refinement and clarification of ideas - product feedback, improved processes
All of which translate to business value by decreasing operational costs, shortening cycle times, accelerating time to revenue, increasing leads, increasing close rates, increasing customer satisfaction, etc etc etc.
I’ve also seen the negative - the mass email offering damning evidence of illegal, unethical, or racist perspective e.g. authoring this email, or the Facebook photo that shows that the boss was lied to. Obviously, these examples fall into the “overshare”, defined by Encarta as “to give inappropriately personal or detailed information to somebody else, especially a stranger”
So where’s the line between sharing and oversharing? Is sharing value-additive or value-neutral? Is oversharing value-detractive by promoting or demonstrating a lack of ethics or social justice?
Could we develop a framework to run through before we create content?
- Who does the information benefit?
- Who are the other authors / speakers on the topic?
- What are they saying?
- Are your ideas or information somehow different by content or audience?
