Social Networking has become ubiquitous. From Twitter and Facebook to Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ and Youtube, there is a social network to suit just about any demand or interest. Every minute of every day people are out there connecting and sharing, creating a rich world of content.
Businesses are also looking for ways to interact with social media. They are hiring social media specialists, trying to integrate the way they do business with this new and exciting frontier. They look for new ways to promote themselves, and to find new ways to communicate with their customers. The potential benefits to both companies and people are huge. But it's not all sunshine and lollipops - there are big risks there as well, to both companies and individuals.
The more spectacular failings of businesses are easy to see. If they are particularly impressive these failures may even make the pages of the traditional paper press. The individual failures, however, tend to go a little more unnoticed - and it will be these failures that I want to focus upon. These failures, while not as publicly spectacular, are potentially worse for the individual caught up in them. These failures can cost a person their job, damage their career, and can damage both their personal and professional relationships.
But how do these things happen?
Primarily, I believe, that there is a gap between what people believe is private and what really is private. Many people consider Facebook to be private, and that what they post on their Facebook page is purely for private use and will never been seen outside of that private space. But let's examine that a little bit closer. In November of 2012 Facebook released an article called “Anatomy of Facebook”, which stated that the average number of “friends” that a person had on Facebook was 190 people. So every time someone posts something on their Facebook page they are telling, on average, 190 people! If you were stood up on a stage addressing 190 people, would you be feeling like what you said was private?!?!
And reality is actually worse than this. Every comment, every picture, every status update is recorded in an easily searchable, perpetual, database. And it's a database where any of your current or future “friends” can copy that post and send it on with the barest click of a mouse! So, going back to our example of standing in front of a crowd of 190 people, I now want you to imagine that every single one of them is pointing a video camera at you and jotting down every word you are saying. Still feeling like it's private?
By why does this matter?
Would you believe I have actually been asked that question? Multiple times in fact. The people who ask this question seem to have the concept that if something was posted in a place which they thought was private then it shouldn't matter, and that other people are in the wrong if they base a judgement on that post. All I can say to that is, guess what, the world doesn't work that way! People judge people on every piece of information they have, be it their dress, their speech or the comments they post on the internet. So, just because you think it should be ignored doesn't mean it will be. If privacy existed in places just because someone wanted it to there would be an awful lot less stuff filling gossip magazines!
So what to do?
Previously we have posted about the dos and don'ts of social media - http://skyerecruitment.
So before you post, be it about what you got up to at the weekend, how rubbish your day at work was, or what you are planning to have for dinner, stop and think. Would I want this published on the front page of my local newspaper? And, if it was published, what effect could that have on me personally? What if my boss, potential future employers, colleagues or clients saw this post?
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