Surviving Social Media: The Supine Struggle

Part of the Temperament/Social media series in collaboration
with Elemental Truths. You can find all of the relevant articles
linked at the bottom of the Introduction.

When Reg suggested we kick off this series by looking at the Supine temperament, I got excited. As a Supine/Sanguine, I can vouch for the difficulty that the Supine temperament presents when dealing with social media.

Most obviously, there’s the somewhat wacky Supine approach to socialization. As Reg puts it in his post,

“They have very little need to initiate association or socialization, but have a high need to be approached by many people for association and socialization.”

MMhmm. It’s against the Supine nature to reach out to others - we want others to approach us.

But most popular Social Media sites reward an aggressive style of socialization. To build a network of friends on services like Twitter, Facebook or you need to promote yourself heavily… it means inviting (and even nagging) people to join the service, and use it actively. It means talking to strangers, even when the strangers don’t talk back.

See the problem?

Social networking services just don’t work in ways we Supine types socialize.

We’re big on the “If you build it, they will come… ” approach.

But with the typical MySpace/Twitter/Facebook models, “they” just ain’t gonna come, no matter what we build - not unless we do some serious promotion and actively seek out a following.

Other typical Supine traits pose a problem, too…

That “undervalued sense of self worth”that Reg mentions in his article? It raises doubts in me about the “worthiness” of every post, tweet or comment I make.

Seriously. I fret over this stuff.

“Is that really WORTH A Tweet? What if I’m wasting people’s time?”

(oh for gawds sake, Deaux, it’s TWITTER.. its supposed to be mundane and pointless!)

Then there’s that Supine need to appear humble: it just doesn’t jive with the sort of shameless self promotion required for real success on services like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and or even just building up a blog’s readership.

Honestly, I wouldn’t bother, except for that primary Supine motivation: the desire to be useful, to contribute to a greater cause. Bottom line? Social media and the networking it provides is unmatched when it comes to reaching others, raising awareness and funds, building a network of supporters and suportees (is that even a word? oh well.)

So what’s the solution?

Other than sitting back and waiting for Social Media to evolve, here *are* ways Supines can be more comfortable with the existing networking sites. So for you fellow servant-leader types out there, give these suggestions a whirl:

• Focus your online identity around a greater cause. That way, instead of promoting yourself, you’re are promoting awareness of that cause. Supine’s may be most comfortable creating accounts for blogs, businesses, and causes, rather than for ourselves … it keeps the spotlight off our personal identity, but allows us to promote those things we feel are worthy.
• Minimize the Supine-ish insecurities and need for reassurance - they can cause real problems with Social Media, making us seem whiney and undermining our goals. To participate effectively, we’ll need to work at not being overly sensitive to the usually quickly typed out responses (or the lack of them). Cyber conversations move quickly, and most users have very short attention spans. That means that the contributions of less aggressive personalities can be quickly overlooked and left behind, and we may have to work at not taking a lack of response as a reflection of the worth of our contribution.
• Fast moving services like Twitter provide a hidden benefit… our moments of awkward insecurity will quickly be buried and forgotten by the masses, if they were ever noticed in the first place.
• Remember that social sites are dominated by extroverts (largely Sanguine and Choleric types) and the most popular, commented on topics usually center around them. But there are many more introverted personalities on the services as well. They may not respond often, but they do read and find value in what they read. If we Supine types picture these quiet lurkers as their fellow underdogs on the services, we can find our own voices and speak up on their behalf (something we’re particularly fond of doing anyway)
• Realize that you don’t need to be the best, biggest or most popular to be effective. Your goal likely isn’t to reach the most people, but to reach the *right* people - the ones who can help you in your cause, or those who need your help.
• Create a home base that invites further contact. Since Supines dislike reaching out for attention, but need others to reach out to them, we need to create an interesting, encouraging “home base” of sorts, something that draws people to us. It may take the form of a carefully crafted blog, home page or even just a profile, but whatever the form, it needs to actively invite further contact and conversation. (note to Deaux… fix your broken contact form!)

Best Social Sites for Supines?

Old fashioned email lists, message boards and chat rooms seem better suited to introverted temperments than the new Web2.0 Social Media networking focus - more on that later this week. But of the current options?

Blogging (especially in a blog network) is a great option for Supines. Blogs provide an easy format for contributing useful information, and being part of a network means you won’t have to fight quite as hard for traffic. If you don’t want to run your own blog, consider guest posting, offering support or answering questions in the comments section of other blogs.

Consider Twitter and it’s clones: It’s fairly passive, and people almost never get annoyed if you follow them. The limited options and strict structure appeals to the “I dont want control!” part of a Supine. Plurk may be an even better Twitter-like option. It’s still limited in the sense of 140 characters or less, but the Plurk conversational format is more likely to encourage feedback and further contact.

There are endless Q&A and advice networks out there, well suited to a Supine need to be helpful: check out All Experts and Yahoo Answers.

Or look for groups related to your interest/cause on Facebook, Myspace, and other established general networking sites - most of them have special interest groups you can join. There are plenty of specialized social networks as well, sites like Gaia (which focuses on new age style “changing the world”)WorldCoolers (focuses on Global Warming) there are countless networks and groups focused on family, religion, local and national politics, even fitness.

In Conclusion?

Supines of the world, pick your cause, find a network, and go be cyber social!
We will survive the effort.
Promise.