If you’re new to the public eye, you may be a bit concerned about the impact of social media on your personal and professional life. You’re right to be concerned; once your information is out on the web, all kinds of people can get to you. The following tips are designed to protect you while promoting yourself through social media.
Learn About Social Media
Image courtesy of @mkofab (eltpics)
• None of your personal information is available to the public
• The accounts are easy to access and manage
• They link to your blog, website, products, etc.
• People can find the information you want to display without any negative information coming available
Protect Your Personal Information
One of the primary concerns of anyone who is in the public eye is learning how to protect yourself from identify theft, impersonation, or the revelation of personal information. You may want to change all your accounts to new addresses (P.O. boxes are popular) and create new email addresses and such for accounts. Be sure never to reveal personal information via tweets or posts. Always think ahead, asking yourself if you will want this information to be available to coworkers, neighbors, family members, strangers, stalkers, or competitors in five or ten years. Err on the side of caution.
Investigate Reputation Management Services
Once you’re in the public eye, you need to start thinking about reputation in a whole different light. Your competition, fan base, or “haters” will want to attack you publicly. While you can protect yourself in some ways (monitoring comments and not allowing people to comment on your blog without your permission, limiting the types of reviews allowed on your site), there are a lot of things you can’t control easily.
Look into a reputation management service, even if it’s just for a few consulting sessions to get tips on how to protect your reputation online. You may have discovered that protecting your reputation is tedious, exhausting, time-consuming work. This can take you away from precious time spent doing the work you need to focus upon.
You can hire a service to monitor your social media accounts and to scan the web for negative information or to get positive information out about you (some of these services also offer public relations services such as positive PR). Depending on your position and monetary situation, you may want more or fewer services. Most reputation management services offer a range of services, so you’ll be sure to find something that fits your situation.
Hire Someone To Manage Your Social Media Efforts
Most people who are in the public eye find they need someone else to run their social media efforts so they can focus on doing whatever it is that got them into the public eye in the first place. While this may seem impersonal, it’s really the only practical way to handle the time demand of social media efforts. You can find inexpensive PR companies and social media managers that know their stuff and can represent you exactly the way you’d like to be represented. They’ll tailor responses to match your tone and will stay abreast of changes in the social media scene, alerting you of new opportunities that you may have missed.
It’s not easy to keep up with the demands of social media accounts when in the public eye, but it’s important to stay up on the latest social media trends. You can do it – with a little help and advice from professionals who know the field well.
About the author:
Amanda Tradwick is a grant researcher and writer for CollegeGrants.org. She has a Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Delaware, and has recently finished research on educational grants and college grants for mothers.
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