Should a Real Name be Required when Participating in Social Media?

This question has been floating out there for a while, but I just wanted to get it in circulation again. Frankly, I believe that if you are not willing to reveal who you really are when participating in social networks, forums, and other social media, then you shouldn’t have a voice.

Trusting Anonymous Sources
In the real world, we are responsible for our actions. We’re liable for what we say and do. Why should it be any different online?

Why should we be able to go around representing ourselves as someone else, or hiding behind artificial usernames or anonymity? People who do this in the real world are usually doing so for a few reasons:

1 – They’re hiding from someone
2 – They are criminals
3 – They are spammers

A-List blogger, Jeremy Schoemaker recently published an article posing essentially the same question, Is Anonymity Good For The Internets? In looking through the comments, I noted something interesting . . . most of those who were fervently in favor of anonymity were posting using keywords as their name instead of posting as themselves.

What does that tell you?

99% of the time when someone creates an anonymous or fake account on our BiggerPockets.com Real Estate Community, these people are there to do one of the above. Most are spammers, but there are several who are there to misrepresent the truth (lie), and many who are there to scam others. We also will not allow anonymous commenters, and I’ve now implemented the same policy on this blog as well. If you can’t represent yourself, you’re not wanted.

What do you think? Should people be allowed to remain anonymous online?

I’ll admit that I’ve become accustomed to using Twitter (and other social media) throughout my day to share interesting information, links, articles, etc. I’ve been doing it for some time now, but I came to an epiphany yesterday that is going to change my behavior. I wasn’t sharing my every move like the guy in the video below (and like a HUGE number of people that I watch do), but I was still spending quality time building up Twitter instead of this and my other websites. Dave Fleet put together a good post about the commitment requirements of blogging vs Twitter, and in response to his article, I’ll argue that your time is better served blogging.

When you post links, tips, and other information on Twitter, you get little direct benefit, unless your linking to your own content only, which is a turnoff for many followers. While your followers may appreciate the information you share, and you may build your Twitter follower count, you’re foregoing the opportunity to build your own direct community for immediate gratification.

Instead of Tweeting About Your Niche, Blog About It!

One of the perks of Twitter, of course, is that it lets you send short bits of information. We may not always want to do an entire blog post about something, but I’ve noticed in my case and that of others, that we are spending more and more time chatting it up on Twitter at the expense of our own blogs.

I realized that I was spending close to an half hour a day on Twitter . . . time that I could otherwise spend building up my own content and blog’s brand. Some people may argue that I can better build the brand by spending time on Twitter, but I disagree. I think Twitter is a great tool to help extend the reach of your brand, but in that half hour a day I was Tweeting, I could be working on my own articles and creating better content for my readers.

Reasons to Blog Instead of Tweeting

• First and foremost, you retain the traffic – Content is king, and once you go on Twitter and other networks to share content instead of doing it on your own site, you’re helping to build their community instead of your own. Of course, your followers may enjoy the link out to a cool story or link, but why give away the link juice when you can do a post about it on your own site and retain eyeballs?
• Monetization – There are certainly some tools designed to monetize Twitter for users (primarily, these are money making URL shortner tools), but if you’re adding the content to your own site, you increase the monetization capabilities of your blog.
• Deep exploration of a topic, site, link, etc – I realize that the beauty of Twitter is that it is a “micro blogging” application. That said, it isn’t a great place to deeply explore and delve into a topic. You can certainly talk about a topic in a series of tweets, but it makes it difficult for a large group of readers/followers to stay on message. Obviously, a blog post can deeply examine any subject, of course provided the writer is capable of expressing himself.

I do think that there is value in participating on Twitter, and I’ve made a ton of great connections through it, but I think it is very easy to get caught up in it all. A little bit of time each day is fine, but any more and you should probably be hanging out on your own website or building up your own content.

Are there other reasons that I’m missing? What do YOU think?

Is your time better served posting on Twitter or adding additional content to your own website?

Tags: blog, Blogging, community, make money, Online Communities, Social Media, Social network, Twitter