Social media, will all of its benefits to you as an individual, also has risks attached to it. Using social media without thinking about the consequences can have a disastrous impact on your career. If someone has a platform to share thoughts quickly, it can become a slippery slope.
Social media can connect you to an audience at an impressive speed, but also gives you the chance to share inappropriate or questionable content. So, there are a few things you can do to make sure you don’t destroy your career when using social media.
How To Not Destroy Your Career
Common Sense
It sounds simple, but common sense is incredibly important when it comes to social media. Sharing photos of yourself on a beach when you’ve called in sick to work is not going to be a good idea. Tweeting that you don’t enjoy your work and hate
your boss is also likely to be a pretty disastrous idea.
Separate Your Accounts
If you’re a user of multiple social networking sites, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr,
LinkedIn, it may be a good idea to separate each one. LinkedIn is known to be more professional, while Facebook is more for sharing with friends. Separating each account and knowing the differences between each one is advantageous as you can decide what comments to post on each separately. Keeping LinkedIn for professional connections while having a more casual stance on Twitter gives some separation between professional and casual conversations.
Use The Correct Tone
When it comes to tone, try to use the correct tone depending on the situation. While on Facebook you can have a more casual conversation, services like LinkedIn are built as a professional network. Understand which networks require a certain tone of voice; it helps to make sure you come across in the right way.
Know Your Privacy Settings
All social media networks have an array of privacy settings that you can tweak with to get a tailored privacy setting depending on what you’d like to share with other individuals. These can go from a totally private profile to a more open profile, but it’s important as it means you have complete control over what is seen by others.
Hide And Remove Unwanted Comments
You may feel it is harsh to hide comments from your friends, however, if they are deemed inappropriate by you, keeping your profile clean and professional is key to
keeping a good professional reputation online.
Keeping a professional reputation online is becoming more and more important. Use common sense online to make sure you’re coming across in a professional manner. While social media gives great opportunities, make sure you’re not making any mistakes in using the networking sites.
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