Work and personal life – the online connection
Earlier this week, while on Facebook, I discovered my company President. Dressed smartly in a tuxedo, he looked like someone you’d be proud to have on your friend list. However, I wasn’t motivated to do so because the first thing that popped into my mind was censorship, that is, if you have your company President on your list, he’s likely to see all your smart aleck friends scrawling what they want on your wall, and basically, he’d have a window to your world. Not that you have anything bad there, but you’d really like to think that you have a private side that is separate from the work environment. Now, colleagues and I are on each others’ friend lists, and communicate with each other on Facebook. But, we’re bonded by the fact that we’re in the same age bracket, and well, we’re not management.
This reminds me of conversations that have been taking place in the blogosphere for some time now. Fellow blogger, and Facebooker, Paull Young, speaks of the implications that your Facebook profile may have on your work life. He also speaks about the fact that now it’s easy to Google people, and find something about you, whether it’s on your blog, MySpace page, or Linkedin profile.
I’m always reminded of this when, now and then, my statistics show that someone found my blog because they typed my name into Google’s search engine. My first question is, what do they want with me? Then, I go directly to my e-mail to see if someone emailed me. Sometimes, there’s a message waiting for me.
Another thing to factor in is what you say on other people’s blogs, because Google pulls up comments in their search results. So you see, once you’ve decided to openly embrace social media, you’ve got to remember that:
Whatever you place on the web will be found.
1. Don’t write anything you don’t want people to see.
2. It may take a long time for your name to spread in the blogosphere, but it will spread somehow. Sometimes, it takes one influential blog, e.g. Barbados Free Press, to take note of you, and expose its readers to you.
Always remember that once you’re blogging, on Facebook, twittering, and basically creating many channels where people can find you, they can always make that connection between your personal and professional identities. Me, I find it easier to just not be schizophrenic. I’m the same Karel wherever I go.
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Words to the wise - let’s hope that many take note. From what I’ve seen in many of the social media networks it appears many do not have a clue how what they show and say can and will turn up to haunt them someday.
In fact I’m going to blog about this, and link back to you.