The Botox Effect: Five Ways to Cope with Online Silence - Conversation Starter

I met Jen, a beautiful young woman who had just been promoted to a senior creative role at a major consumer goods company, at a quintessentially New York cocktail party. She had a generous smile and animated way of speaking when she talked about her company and her job. Then she asked me about my job, and as I started talking, Jen's face fell flat and her sparkle faded. I panicked a little. Was my discussion of online strategy really that boring? I found myself rambling through a perplexing conversation that produced sparkle when she talked, but nothing when I did. I left the party baffled.

Months later, a mutual friend mentioned she had just returned from Jen's birthday party: her fortieth. "Jen is forty?" I asked, astonished. "Oh yeah," my friend assured me. "She's just a big Botox user."

Suddenly, the cocktail party made sense. Jen wasn't uninterested. She was cosmetically compromised, made passive by anti-aging injections.

In a way, your online audience is like a Botox user. Even if you have an enthusiastic audience for your blog, your Facebook page, or your Twitter feed, the enthusiasm is invisible.

via blogs.harvardbusiness.org

Posted via web from ipera's posterous