Five Social Media Tips to Manage Your Personal Brand Online
Most PR professionals deal with not only their own social media, but also their companies social media outlets. In the last few years many of us have seen plenty of breath holding moments online. Dominos Video Prank, Paula Deen’s Racism Scandal, Burger King bought out by McDonalds, and many more. At some point, there will be a crossover from your personal social life to your professional social life. To make sure that you don’t end up with out a job here are
Five tips for your personal and professional profiles:
1. Think before you type. It is very easy to send a tweet about how unfair your boss is, or how hard a day you had at work. Keep in mind that those posts live on long after you hit send. Always be professional and respectful with your personal media, you never know who is looking.
2. Set your privacy settings, be discrete. This maybe obvious to you, but some people don’t ever think about changing or checking their privacy settings. If you don’t want your personal information to be seen by people you are not friends with, set your settings to private. This is something you should care about, and if there is something on your page that can be used against you it will. Even if you think you’ve done a careful job of maintaining anonymity double check and Google yourself, you might be shocked at what comes up.
3. Don’t be inappropriate. We have all been to parties, and we all have those photos of the cute bartender and a bunch of shots wearing skirts that are too short. If you’re in a job representing a company , it’s time to clean up your media. Take down the inappropriate photos, and stop posting anything inappropriate.
4. Use Real Words. It seems like more than ever before people abbreviate everything. Unless your seriously hindered by the 140-character limit of Twitter, don’t use slang or abbreviated worlds like “sup”, “cuz” or “h8”. Be an adult, use real words.
5. Develop a positive social brand. Personal branding is the process which we market ourselves to others. Whether your posting on your social media, your companies social media, or you are talking to someone in the real world, your words, actions and behaviors represent you all the time. One bad mishap can have a negative ripple affect. Make sure you are you 100% of the time.
