Authenticity is the word of the day when it comes to social media, isn’t it. But its really no surprise. Why? Because authenticity has power. It is the ability to speak your truth – not a manufactured truth. Not a series of words designed to elicit a specific response.

At the same time, much of what we hear about with regards to social media is about vanity. Self-aggrandizing tweets have prompted the site Tweeting Too Hard, where, as the site states, “Self-important tweets get the recognition they deserve.”

Interestingly, a lot of the tweets on Tweeting Too Hard are incredibly authentic. Check out this regular (who now has protected her tweets, to the chagrin of the fans of  Tweeting Too Hard) and who obviously is quite removed from the reality that most of us share:

Oy.

Vain. Completely, and yes, authentically, vain. Authenticity is being honest – letting what ever it is that you are (laid back, smart, snobbish, witty, and yes, vain) hang out.

But  many people have what I would call “Twitter Angst”, and confuse it with vanity. In spans from anxiety about what people might think of their posts to unrealistic expectations of how much their followers are paying attention to them.  They might tweet with expectations of a sure fire response of multiple retweets, and then suffer when that doesn’t happen. “But that was an awesome, pithy tweet! WTF?” That’s not vanity. And neither is it authentic.

The trick with Twitter is to speak your mind honestly and see what happens. The rest of the world might not be listening, and thats ok. Think about the stream you follow and how many tweets you just simply miss. Unless you’re Chris Brogan (who shows up on Tweeting too Hard too, by the way), there’s probably not a lot of people waiting with baited breath for your next 140 character utterance.

Remember, there’s power in being authentic regardless of the response. Be authentic. Be vain if that’s who you are. Be authentically vain. But get past the twitter angst – it  just isn’t worth it.

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