Your Social Media Presence

I was contracted to help an organization write their Employee Handbook.  Luckily for me they wrote most of it and wanted my help with editing and checking to see if they included all of the things that should be included.  I noticed that they didn't have a policy addressing social media so I wrote up some guidelines.

Today I was looking at some comments within one of my Facebook groups.  It happens to be a political group and I know better than to make any comments; I just like to read the updates. Someone made some very derogatory comments on the page so I did a quick Google search on their name (for the purposes of this blog) and I could see where they worked.  Ooops!

What do these two subjects have in common other than sharing social media (social media can include LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, blogs, wikis and others.)?

1. Your comments, especially in social media may be seen by your company, your clients, your vendors and suppliers.  If you are looking for a job, an organization can easily Google you and see these very same comments. 

 2. The photographs that you post on many of these sites may also be visible to others.

You can Google yourself by putting quote marks around your name in the search box like this, “Nancy Range Anderson”.  If you have an active social media presence, you’ll quickly discover your words and photos. 

Should you stop commenting? That’s up to you and your personal and professional needs.  Just be mindful of what you say and post because it can come back and bite you. Many companies have policies about the use of social media so you have to be very careful where you tread.