Who are you? How do you evidence it?
The proliferation of social media affords us the opportunity to develop a brand that we can showcase to the world. Such an opportunity has never before been available. The impact on your career, positive or otherwise, can be immense.
So what brand do you want to portray? What do you want your online presence to say about you? How do you want it to represent you? What platform are you using to portray it?
The chances are you don’t have just one online identity, you will have many. Each will offer a slightly different insight in to you and your brand. We all make our own rules. For me, Facebook is close family and friends. Linkedin is for professional and business contacts. Twitter is a great way to communicate messages and as a consequence develop my online brand, to engage with people all over the world that I might otherwise never have met and indeed to create business opportunities.
This blog is my mouthpiece, my opportunity to share my thoughts, views, learning, experience, with anyone who want’s to listen. Or indeed to form an opinion on me, good or bad.
There are more, countless more. Don’t even get me started on Google+. Do you have time for yet another social network? The statistics would appear to suggest that we just can’t get enough of them.
Have you considered what your online brand says about you? Have you ever tried to google yourself? What does it say?
You can bet next time you are looking for a job, your prospective employer will have done their homework on you. Ask yourself what you want them to know? To see? To read? Consider this. Once it’s on the web, it’s always on the web.
Protecting your online identity is another issue again. How can you prove that you are indeed who you say you are? What do you do if someone pertaining to be you posts online pictures, tweets, blogs, comments in your name that are nothing to do with you? It happens.
My favourite blogger is Fred Wilson who pens the excellent Musings of a VC in NYC.
What I love about it is that he teaches me something new everyday. Despite the fact that I have never met Fred, I feel as if I know him, or at least have a sense as to the kind of character he is. His online presence, brand, identity is to me entirely compelling, not least because he is operating in a space that fascinates me. That aside I would encourage you to read his post
Identity, Authentication and provisioning them online
We have multiple online identities. That means a prospective employer has a choice as to what messages they accept around you and your brand. Check them out. Make sure you know what is being said about you online, by you, by your colleagues, friends, relatives perhaps even your enemies. My point is not to freak you out here, but to ensure that you are at least aware. Once something is online, it’s always online.
