Private is Professional

Do you have your settings on private?

Do you think that your posts are private, or that no one can track your location from the pictures you post?  Well a website, Ready or Not can show you just how wrong you are.  By putting in your Instagram or Twitter handle you can see recent posts and where they were posted.  This is done using the location tags on your phone.  If you really want to be private, go to your phone settings and turn off the location setting for your apps.  For personal safety reasons it's good to have this feature turned off.  

Public or Private?
As you start easing your way into the professional world, you might want to start thinking about making your social media accounts private.  This funny Youtube video makes a serious point about that by showing you how easy it is for someone to find your information on social media sites.


Although this video is a serious invasion of privacy, he does nothing illegal and it is a good idea, for personal AND professional reasons, to make most of your sites private.

So what about everything on a non private account?

That's all in your digital footprint!

Today, everyone is sharing everything, and sometimes too much, online.  An article by Joe Ross, he talks about thinking twice about what you put on social media.  It is important to think twice before posting anything because once it is on the internet, it's permanent.

Your digital footprint can turn into digital baggage just like in this video titled Attention Young Professionals! What's Your Digital Baggage? A man named Jarred is applying for a new job and during his interview the interviewer searches him and finds some very unflattering information about him.  Start thinking NOW about what you want potential employers to see and what you wouldn't want them to see.  Then, maybe don't put certain things, like pictures or statuses about calling in sick and going to the beach, up on social media accounts.

So just what is YOUR digital footprint?  This post gives a lot of information about how your digital footprint can define who you are as a professional candidate.  While some employers think looking at someones personal profiles can actually help them land the job, almost double the amount of employers believe that it will hurt a candidates chance.

Time to go back and check your accounts!

But what about a PLN?
PLN's are different because you want to be able to share the information you find with everyone.  It is not only a place for YOU to learn, but to spread the knowledge about your field.  
Some of my tweets on my Twitter account have been getting retweeted, which couldn't happen if that account was private.  This account is strictly professional, so what you have on there should be professional and mainly information on the field or topic of your choice. Since my Twitter isn't set on private, this also gives me the opportunity to communicate with people that don't follow me and have interactions like the one below where American Airlines thought that my hashtag #GEN2243 was in response to my flight being delayed.

@CJ_Hage We're showing AA 2243 already departed. Can you check the flight number again please?

— American Airlines (@AmericanAir) February 12, 2016

@CJ_Hage That's pretty neat! We're glad we could be apart of it. Best of luck with your studies.

— American Airlines (@AmericanAir) February 12, 2016

Other ways to share your information!?
The book, Untangling the Web by Steve Dembo and Adam Bellow talks about using the web, from a educational perspective.  The first chapter talks a lot about the different ways of organizing information on the web including sites like Delicious, which was one of the original link sharing sites, Diigo, mainly for sharing bookmarks, Educlipper, which lets you export your findings to other sites, and SymbalooEDU, which is comprised of a list of icons.  The authors go into detail about public bookmarking and how the we are now a big part of organizing information for people.  Many people also use tagging, or folksonomies, to organize their information and make it easier for people to find.  Tagging is now used in many online platforms like Youtube and blogging which is when you connect your video or post to key words that people can use to search for that information.
One of my other classes is having us make blogs that organized links having to do with our major.  All of the links on MY BLOG pertain to the cruising industry and it is just an organized blog of information.  



Cameron Brenchley
We had a guest speaker in my class this past week, Cameron Brenchley.  Cameron is the VP at Collaborative Communications, an education PR firm in Washington, DC.  He has also had other jobs that focused on PR and Social Media.  One of these jobs included being the first Director of Digital Strategy for the US Department of Education.  In the video below he talks about going from a fast pace government job to his new position that gives him much longer time frames to work on his projects!  He also talks about using social media in a more private and professional setting!  Check out the video below to hear him answer more questions.