I’ve made significant changes to my online identity lately in an effort to tighten my personal brand. I did this because it seems like the right thing to do at this point in my life. I’m currently searching for work as an attorney, and hope that anything a prospective employer finds online will strengthen my image, not hurt it.
Managing one’s online brand is no easy task. The privacy settings on Facebook, alone, require a graduate degree in Gen X to decipher. Add to that Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Delicious, Flickr, and a dozen others and there is significant room for negative exposure.
I’m taking three steps to ensuring I have the positive and respectable online brand I wish to have:
- Socialize with upstanding individuals – I read once that you’re only as good as your five closest friends. If they’re not going anywhere, it’s likely that you’re not either. This passes double for the internet. I friend true friends whom I know in person and I trust their level of maturity.
- Vigilant use of privacy settings – When number one fails, it’s nice to be able to contain the damage. By setting the privacy settings such that only friends can see comments I don’t like, I can keep them from the public.
- Abstinence if necessary – Sometimes it’s just not worth it to be on a certain service, either because of the people attracted to it, a lack of privacy settings, or another reason. In these cases, I would rather sign off permanently and not have to worry about it.
Some people fear having an online presence, and I’ve always fought that. There are two main reasons I like sticking my neck out:
- Having an online brand is a reality of today. It’s easy to connect and communicate online. I’ve kept up with far more friends – even on a digital level – than I otherwise would have.
- Another positive specific to blogging is that I am able to establish myself on dozens/hundreds of topics. No other medium would allow me flush out my thoughts or you to access them. I can take a stance, argue it, and create discourse – for better or worse. Whether my beliefs change or are strengthened by the process, only time will tell.
Blogging, twittering, and facebooking are worth it, to me, for those two reasons.