Over Sharing on the Internet

The internet was designed for over sharing. Facebook, WordPress and Twitter are only a few of the sites that practically beg you to tell everyone you know what you think about Bieber or what the meal you just ate looked like. It is part of being human to want to share your life with others and in most cases I think that is a great thing. So while I do shake my head at some of my friends who have changed their relationship status for the 4^th time this week, I also love it. If they want to share that with me, it is their choice, and I’ll know them better for it.

But when it comes to the professional sector a new set of rules apply. At work this week I’ve been tasked to peruse a few different companies to decide whether or not they would be a good fit to help us out with a project. Most websites were competent, a little bad wording here or a little confusion there, but overall I judged them by what they could provide and not how they were represented. But then I came across a site that made me gasp in the office. Take a look.

To begin I offer you the home page. Nothing special, pretty poorly laid out, not enough white space, but no worse than many of the other small business sites I’ve seen lately. The About Us section is weak as well, but again, nothing to really cause alarm.

But when I arrived at the management page I started to really worry. Did I click somewhere wrong? Am I still on the correct site?

To save you the trouble of reading their bios, I’ll let you know that they are a mother and daughter team that loves the outdoors and spending time with their families. I now know their favorite travel destinations, favorite sports and where Linda’s brother’s ashes were recently spread. Their company and skills are barely mentioned and Linda’s profile could be copied word for word and put on match.com. Are these the people I want as technical consultants? But little did I know, Linda has a blog attached to this website too.

Within minutes I know this business caused her divorce, her father was an alcoholic and that Selena Gomez is one of her inspirations. She even describes how she was discriminated against for being a woman and what it means to be Mormon.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love reading people’s life stories, I obviously love blogging and I love that she believes in what she is doing, but I also know that as a customer I don’t need or want to know any of this. She might have persuaded me that I’d enjoy hanging out with her, but as for her technical skills I am not convinced.

But I do agree with Linda when she argues that everyone has an online presence, whether you want one or not. And she isn’t wrong to want to make sure the information about her comes directly from the source:

“I am trustworthy. I keep my word. I let people know about me through my social networking sites. I find having trustworthy behavior in business creates long term relationships. If I share a little too much then so be it. People know who I am.”

But Linda, now that I know who you are, I’ve lost sight of your company. Just because you are your company, doesn’t mean your company is you.

Last year Snow Whore and I got involved with this start-up marketing company (let’s just say it didn’t work out because of creative differences) and were asked to develop the website. Had we been on our own it wouldn’t have been that difficult to write a bit of copy describing our services, but the owner had pages and pages of content he refused to let us cut. He wanted to explain to customers his personal philosophy, where his ideas had come from, why he was so fundamentally different than the big name marketing companies. His big tag line was “we’ll put you above ourselves” which, while meant to assure, instead added unease. And his second promise was to look at things from a personal perspective, not a ‘techy’ one. Try as we might to convince him that these phrases made his company seem unsuccessful and out of date, he insisted we include it all, even the lines that made us cringe.

It’s been almost a year since we cut and run and his ‘personable’ business still hasn’t taken off. His private philosophies got in the way of his product, and he couldn’t back up his ideals with action. So what can we learn from these two case studies? World of small-business, hear me now. Sell the Product, Not Yourselves. Yes, the internet is built to over share, but that also means the customer can find all the information they need to see through you. I can find someone else to replace you with just a few clicks, be clear and concise with what I need to know and let me decide how you stack up. If you want to add a personal touch or two to make it your own, fine. I don’t even mind a sentence about what you do on your free time, but four paragraphs? Please, please no. Save the rest for your personal blog, or better yet an anonymous one.