Blocking your posts - Why and Why NOT to do it

I know I haven't talked much about transparency and why it is so very important to social media yet, but I think and feel that this topic needs to be mentioned first. My reasoning is that I see individuals and small businesses trying to start branding themselves doing this shortly after they get a few negative responses to their posts.

Why or when should you block your posts? Well if what you have to say is personal and you feel that the public at large doesn't need to read about what you have to say, then you should block your posts. To be honest, you shouldn't even put it on the internet at all if this is the case.

If you are only posting certain things to friends and family then this would be another case for blocking. However, there are better systems in place with better security than Facebook, Twitter, etc. where you don't have to block things. Email is a good example of this. Plus you don't run the risk of accidentally posting something personal to the world either.

Every other use you can think of, you should post to the world if you are serious about getting involved with social media.

Honestly, if you are trying to brand yourself or your business, you shouldn't block anything. The reason for this is very simply, transparency.

As a person trying to brand themselves or a brand trying to break into social media, you want to show your fans/buyers/friends/etc that you are a real, fallible, honest, person behind the brand, call-sign and avatar you have selected to represent yourself with.

What blocking your tweets and such does is cause you to hide who and what you are. This makes people not trust you, want to follow you, or even able to follow you. Because of this it is counter productive to what you are trying to do and will eventually, if not immediately, lead to failure.

You're probably thinking, "But I'm a business and I need control". Yes, blocking your posts does give you control, but control in social media typically means failure. As a business it is understandable that you want to control things. In a normal situation, control is how you tell if things are working right or not. In social media however, control limits your audience and quickly gives you a clear picture that things aren't working. This leads to most businesses giving up because they don't have the results they want as quickly as they predicted. Most don't even realize that it is their own fault that they have failed!

To get good results with social media, you want to get people following you. You do this by following them and responding to them when they speak about specific things related to you. It's even a good practice to respond when it isn't related to your business but it is something you are interested in and can talk intelligently about. When you have blocked your posts, you can't do this efficiently, or in some cases at all. Not to mention that people looking for you simply can't find you.

The bottom line is; If you want to get branded in social media, you need to make it easy for your fans to follow you. Blocking posts and controlling access is counter productive to this effort and should be avoided at all costs.

As always, if you agree or disagree with what I have to say please post a comment so we can discuss it.

More to come...