Considering placing a social footprint within one of the on-line platforms or communities? Are you ready to be followed, invited, pillowfighted, and tested on what character one would be on Giligan’s Island? While social media is about authenticity among participants,participants need to be reminded to exercise common sense when sharing personal information.
After conversations with clients, propects and friends, this social media specialist realized many new footprints being laid down were containing highly sensitive participant information. Due to social media interactions we no longer see strangers as strangers. We see strangers as neighbors. We share and collaborate on platforms that we believe everybody is a friend and a follower. We forget our neighbors may not be friendly and may not have a fellow participants’ interests at heart! Our neighbors could be bosses, career criminals, or your angry mother-in-laws.
The term social footprint is used to describe the number of digitial profiles we place on various social and business networking sites throughout the social web. Our social profiles build on the concept of transparency and authenticity with the social web inhabitants. Your social media footprint determines the quality of friends or followers, your credibility in communications, and who you are to all social media participants. Yes, participants do look at one’s digitial footprints before various on-line interactions!
Participants need to stop and think about what they share with other on-line users. One should ponder what they are saying or doing like attending a coctail party. This cocktail party presently contains a few million attendees.
Here are Collective Cloud Consulting’s top ten common sense caveats to consider when placing social footprints and user generated content (video, text, pictures, etc.) within on-line communities:
1. If you feel its a bad idea, don’t do it!
2. If the post, picture, podcast, etc. would embarass your mother or not impress a judge, then don’t post it!
3. Do not post your home address and personal phone numbers on social networking sites! City and State is fine!
4. Consider any present legal issues or entaglements before posting on-line.
5. For small businesses, do post information customers will need to contact you on your terms.
6. After befriending someone on-line, you discover their on-line information is constantly incomplete or erroneous, drop them as a friend.
7. Do not discuss financial and information sensitive data.
8. If you have been a stalking victim, reconsider placing a social media footprint.
9. Do not post embarrasing blogs, pictures, or videos if your boss and co-workers are members of a social network. Do not join fan pages that hate or dislike your employer.
10. Please read Number 1 again!
Also, please remember to take a look at any on-line communities policies if unsure what may be a controversial posting!
As a participant the choice is yours whether you wish to exercise basic common sense with your on-line relationships or not. What types of social footprint security measures have you put in place?
(Apparently one can be pillowfighted via Facebook!)
