I honestly believe that creating a reputation online is rather easy to do. In a manner of an hour, I can have a Facebook profile built, started a Twitter Account, and a blog. There are many free applications that can link the three sites and profiles together and I can use the free tools provided on each of the sites to promote myself online and make myself searchable via Google or other search engines. This part of the process of creating a "brand" is not difficult and can be done by anyone. But... Maintaining that brand is a completely other story. In order to develop that brand and focus it to what you want to make of yourself takes dedication and a lot of energy. It also takes time.
As someone who hopes to create a brand for herself for potential employers to find online, I am doing my best to make sure that I make available the persona I want people to see. Currently, the majority of what I post online is private. My Facebook profile only shows the bare minimum that Facebook will allow; everything else is Friends-Only and my friends list is rather small, compared to a lot of my other friends. I don't use my full name on the profiles of my Twitter account, which makes it very difficult to search for online, and my online journal has the settings switched to make sure that it canNOT be found through a search engine. The only profile I have online which is searchable is my LinkedIn account. At this point, this is OK with me. My LinkedIn account is completely professional. My online journal is rather personal and I don't want potential employers searching and finding what is essentially my diary if I'm applying for a job. However, if I really want to start building my brand online, I will have to make some concrete changes to how I present myself online. My Facebook is where I communicate with my friends and how I communicate with my friends is NOT necessary how I would communicate with clients or employers. The same goes for my Twitter, which is mostly inane banter. What I would need to do is make sure that what I put online, and out to the public, is open enough to be human, but controlled enough to be professional. This will take a great deal of dedication. While it is still me who is writing and making myself a presence online, I still need to act accordingly, as if I was working in a professional environment. I know of friends and friends-of-friends who are very protective of the information they make available on Facebook, mostly keeping an eye on where they are tagged, whether in posts or photos. Those can easily be searched by other people and if you are trying your best to be a professional, having a potential employer find a picture of you doing a keg-stand from a party last weekend is not a good thing.
I agree with many of the points you mention. Presenting ourselves how we want other people to see us can be a challenge, especially when we appear in different capacities online, such as Facebook vs. LinkedIn. How do we make ourselves available professionally yet still keep our personal lives private and not worry that somehow employers or professionals will find the wrong connection to us?
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ReplyDeleteWell stated! It is very easy to create an online reputation, but much harder to monitor it. I agree that the introduction of social networking sites have appeared to blur the lines between one’s private and professional life. As someone who does not have much of an online presence (other than these blogs) it all sounds like a tremendous amount of work. If it is true as stated in the Berlin (2009) article that “78% of recruiters use search engines in their research when they screen new candidates”, one may ask themselves if it is worth it to participate in these social networking sites if it can potentially jeopardize his or her employment.
ReplyDeleteI guess the best philosophy to live by if you choose to participate is if it is too embarrassing to show to your parents then you probably shouldn’t be posting it on the web. Also there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the lax privacy settings on many social networking sites such as Facebook. I just believe that no matter what the privacy settings, if someone has the wherewithal they can probably find the information that you post. So people probably shouldn’t post their deepest darkest secrets out there on the web, even if they think it's secure.
I agree, in developing and keeping a good reputation online, you have to spend a lot of time maintaining and making important decisions when you set up the account. I have been thinking about creating a separate Facebook for personal and professional.
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