The golden rules for social media that will protect your reputation, relationships, and ego both personally and professionally
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78% of Americans had at least one social media account in 2016, making it a very powerful medium that is only growing more powerful every day. With so many people online, this is where we’re making new friends, staying in touch with family, networking with business connections, interacting with customers, looking for jobs, and – for many of us – generally spending a majority of our time. Due to this “new way of life,” we have to learn how to manage our relationships and stay on top of our reputations in a different way.
We want to help you manage your social media use while still taking part in a healthy, productive, and enjoyable way! To that end, we created:
GutwiZdom’s Golden Rules for Social Media
- Stay in the know: Be in control of what gets posted about you online. Look yourself up online by doing a simple Google search and take advantage of the other search tools available to you. Stay up to date on your settings, many of which allow you to control how other people tag you online. For example, here is how you setup your Facebook account so that all tags have to be approved by you.
- Ask yourself: Could this photo/post damage my reputation?
- Think twice about what you post: What goes online stays online forever. We know that 60% of employers will check out a perspective employee’s social media account and 69% of job seekers would pass up an opportunity with a company that has a bad reputation, even if they’re unemployed.
- Ask yourself: How am I portraying myself or my business on social media?
- Quality over quantity: Pay less attention to the number of connections you have and focus on the quality.
- Ask yourself: Is this connection meaningful? What am I getting from this connection, or is it taking something from me?
- Think before you submit: Post with meaning and take other’s feelings and opinions into account before you post or comment.
- Ask yourself: How will others interpret my message?
- Don’t replace in person interaction with social media: Try to cut down on social media use when you could be interacting with a real live person.
- Ask yourself: Am I hiding behind social media rather than making deeper connections?
- Keep narcissism in check: Stay self-aware. Reconsider posting if you’re only doing it for the “likes.” Keep in mind that posting only for adulation might make it more difficult to stop.
- Ask yourself: Why am I posting this? Am I feeding in to the feedback loop?
Do you have stories about how social media has affected your personal or professional life? Let us know by leaving us a voicemail at 646-653-9278 or sending us a message here.
Learn how we help job seekers, employers, and employees by visiting My Success Platform and PEAR Core Solutions.
