You are a brand. Be a good brand manager.
Social media has changed the way that people intertact with Internet and with each other. Many of us have “friends” we’ve never actually met who know more about you than some of your “real” friends. They know what music you like, movies you enjoy, articles you read, and possibly most of your daily habits due a little web app called Twitter. What you must keep in mind is that all these things you do form a picture of who you are… your “brand.” While you may think trolling or posting long tirades of profanity may be fun, those action will be sure to tarnish your brand.
You may ask why this branding may be important. You’re just having fun, and hey, not even using your real name. Remember, while you yourself have become more Internet savvy, so have your potential employers. I’m personally a manager of a department in a company and I’m a potential employer. I can also guarantee that I’m technically savvy. If there is information about you on the Internet, I can find it (there is something connecting you to your pseudonym, I assure you). To be fair, I have really never acted on any information I’ve found, but I have found plenty. You’d be surprised (or maybe not) about how many individuals post negatively about their company and their bosses. I’m not trying to be “Big Brother” on my end, but I feel I have a right to protect myself and my other employees and this means I need to know the people that we’re employing. I usually don’t play “Internet Detective” unless I have a reason to dig deeper. I’ll Google your name and see if anything pops up (also see: MySpace, Facebook). If it’s something disparaging against my company or another employee, and I’ll dig a little deeper and as long as it’s not threatening, I’ll just file it away mentally. If threatening, I’ll take the information to HR and they’ll take it from there. Likely even then not too much would happen because the Internet still has a large area of gray associated with it, but do you want to take that chance?
Knowing what I know, I think about my brand quite a bit and what will come up with a search for my name. The first thing for me is my FriendFeed account which will lead you directly to every presence I have on the Internet. I keep this in mind when I share and post things across the Internet. There are times when I may talk some politics, but that’s a passion of mine that hopefully can be recognized for what it’s worth, and even in that respect, I try not to post anything too controversial. I try to keep my comments no worse than would be considered PG-13.
Some people stress privacy when it comes to the Internet. I have friends that have NO Internet presence at all, which I find to be somewhat unusual and [to me] would send of a red flag as a potential employer. Are they hiding something? I take the opposite approach by saturating the Internet with my name, but I work to guide people to the direction I want. I want something like my LinkedIn profile to be found easily. There are two Vince DeGeorge’s that come up in Google easily in search and the other is a choreography and director. I’ve made it very easy to figure out which one is actually me, as I’m cognizant of the fact that I’m a potential employee for someone. I work to keep any active information on myself up-to-date and relevant at all times. I also work to control my brand with Google alerts. I have one set up for my name, usernames I’ve used, and other various combinations. I certainly want to know if my name is attached to something that I may not be involved with.
At the end of the day, while I’m no Coca-Cola or Hershey’s, I’m pretty satisfied with my brand (though still in beta). Are you?
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
On FriendFeed, this post was liked by 5 people and commented on 0 times hide- Charlie Anzman,
- Jordan Hofker,
- Steven Hodson,
- Shey,
- Hutch Carpenter