Tag Archives: personal branding

Unplugged

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Social media is pretty much my life. I have a really hard time being away from Facebook for too long. I often prefer YouTube to Netflix, and I probably use Snapchat to check in on friends about as often as I use messenger or texting. I also have a pretty smokin’ Pinterest—my fashion board alone has close to 500 pins.

Pinterest

I do not kid around with Pinterest.

I’m also a very political person, and I love using social media to keep up with folks doing the political work I’m interested in. I take Twitter very seriously, and I do my best to post interesting (and intelligent-sounding) tweets and articles. Even more than Facebook and Pinterest keep me in touch with my friends and beautiful shoes, Twitter keeps me in touch with the world. I love having a public profile and getting to engage with all kinds of folks in a public forum.

So when I found out this summer that I need to be cautious about what I post and say online because whatever I do might be used against my lawmaker, I was a little crushed. I need to be particularly careful about posting things that contradict my lawmaker on social media, which makes sense. But I also know the most about certain political situations in LA county, and I worry sometimes that I might post something related to LA that might get construed to reflect badly on the Senator.

Ok, Em, you say, just give up social media for the summer. Or at least make your handles more private.

That made sense initially. Sure, I can scroll but just refrain from posting, right? Or restrict my followers to close family and friends.

But then I realized that it wasn’t so simple as that.

You see, I use my social media handles to market myself. I am all about LinkedIn. My profile errs on the side of too much information. My Twitter adds extra dimension to the image people have of me after searching my name quickly. In fact, my office’s previous intern told me that part of the reason they hired me was because they found my LinkedIn, and were glad that they could know more about me than just what was on my resume.

That, to me, makes it all worth it. But maybe it isn’t really my decision. I’m not the one who comes up for election in a year or two. And I’m also not the one who makes the rules in the office regarding intern behavior (or anyone’s behavior, really) online.

At any rate, here are my thoughts so far on how to use social media when you’re working for a high-profile person who may be harmed by what you post:

1. Assume anyone you’re working for could be hurt by what you post. Always.

2. It’s easy to stick to news items to tweet. Find someone who’s not a regular headline news source and retweet them. I like to find White House press reporters on Twitter and retweet the quotes they get from media briefings with the President and other officials. It’s an easy way to post something with a little more substance than CNN’s main profile. News = no opinions (just make sure the news doesn’t make your employer look bad) AND White House press team = ooh look how savvy you are.

Danny Concannon

Reason 2.5 to follow a White House reporter on Twitter.

3. Use your presence to hype up what your employer’s doing. This earns you brownie points with your employer and also might tell future employers that you’re loyal and enjoy the type of work you’re doing.

Still, do these benefits and good ideas outweigh the problems inherent to a public forum system?

So what do you think? Is social media too dangerous to do any good? Or is the leap of faith worthwhile and exciting? Let me know your thoughts on this! I could use a little advice.

Life After Scripps, Version 3.0

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The problem I always have during Life After Scripps week, every year I’ve been here, is that I simply can’t go to all of the events I would like to attend. If you couldn’t tell already, I’m someone who likes to plan ahead and make lists, so a whole week devoted to encouraging students to think ahead to their lives post-Scripps is right up my alley. I’m the kind of person who procrastinates on homework by looking at graduate school programs. When we got the schedules in our mailbox the other week, I immediately marked it up with which events I really wanted to go to, but, no surprise, life and schoolwork got in the way. I only ended up making it to one of the events that I wanted to go to, but, as a friendly CP&R employee reminded me when I complained about a class conflict on Facebook – I can always make an appointment to talk about these things individually. That’s what CP&R is for!

The event I was able to make it to was titled “Crafting Your Identity: Personal Branding and the Post-Scripps Transition.” It was also part of CP&R’s new Emerging Professionals program (more information available here) which I’m excited to watch develop, and hope to participate in next year when I’ll actually be around for the whole year. The workshop was led by Char Booth, the Instruction Services Manager & E-Learning Librarian at Honnold-Mudd Library, and Booth openly admitted that a lot of what she was sharing with us about personal branding were things she had learned through her own life experiences. While a lot of the basics of the session were things I had heard before – don’t post inappropriate photographs all over Facebook, try to be aware of how much information is available about you through controlling your privacy settings across different social media – it was nice to have a whole workshop devoted to it, instead of someone mentioning it in passing. A top thing that Booth mentioned that I have been trying to remember to do regularly is “stalk yourself- but not in a narcissistic way.” Regular Google searches, or even setting up a Google alert on your name, can be quite eye-opening, and give you a better idea of the kinds of things a potential employer might find while trying to make a hiring decision.

Something we should all probably do more often…

Booth also gave a really impassioned explanation of why you 1) shouldn’t be afraid of networking, and 2) shouldn’t be afraid to ask for things from those you have networked with. Overall, the workshop got me thinking about some aspects of my own online presence, and wondering what, if anything, I should change. If you want to look over the presentation, you can do so here, but be aware that parts of it might not make sense unless you were there.

Who else went to Life After Scripps events last week? Which ones? Was anyone else as eager for it all as me and actually managed to get it all in? (And if you did, could I borrow your notes?) Let me know what Life After Scripps was like for you!