Social Media Effective Habits

Effective Habits

• Understand privacy settings and be careful with posting personal information online especially: birthdates, birth places, pet names, information about children, or password hints.
• Remember what you post online has endless paths to the public regardless of any privacy settings. (Once something goes line, there is no telling where that item will go).
• Positive comments and work will improve your social networking value. From the old days of billboards systems, flames and constant negativity will reflect on your online reputation.
• Understand who is on your follow lists (exs and people associated with them) since posting items may invoke some jealousies. As well, co-workers, classmates, or teachers on your follow lists may require scrutiny of social media communications.
• Be involved with discussions if you mean to network with people or to discuss issues. Network only with those groups or people that you would want to actually network. If you are not involved in the discussion of which you are a part of the group, then you may find yourself approving comments or groups attitudes simply by association regardless of your own viewpoint in the issues. In other words, do not simply add yourself to groups or become fan of people just to increase your numbers.
• Careful about posting questionable material. Warren Buffet's point is appropriate here that an upstanding reputation of quality can take years to build but only a few minutes to destroy. While one should not censor opinions or actions, be mindful that those opinions and actions define you both in cyberspace and in reality.
• A sub point to that is to search your name on Google (e.g. search engines) and the social media networks for questionable material about you. Knowing that material has been posted can help you prepare for handling that situation, and you can decide whether you want to be involved with a particular discussion.
• Using social media for business can generate leads and business if you are willing to build relationships rather than front a corporate image. Consumer and business trends indicate less attention to advertising and corporate image, but more people are focusing upon building more intimate personal relationships and establishing trust in order to conduct business. Conducting business on these networks requires a foundational strategy and focus of purpose for using them as well as be able to handle reputation attacks via social media.
• Be wary of adding people (followers) or approving friend requests that you do not know to your networks especially when the entity is asking for information. Phishing schemes are developing to entice users into giving up personal data via social networks that can be used to gain access to other sites (e.g. financial institutions, mail, employer networks).
• Whether you choose to be involved in social networks, they exist and chances are someone you know is using them and you may be involved indirectly because of their involvement. You can choose to be a part of the discussion or you can ignore these communications channels. Yet, a vast opportunity exists for those that leverage these tools.