What You Shouldn’t Be Doing On Social Media

Best friend’s wedding – social media, first solo road trip – social media, promotion – social media, breakup – social media and so it goes on. However, while social media is a great platform to promote your brand and yourself, one must be incredibly careful with respect to what you put out there, because as great as it is for building a brand it can just as easily break it. One small mistake on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and the likes and you’ll find yourself suddenly in a tight spot managing reputation issues. Here are a few things that you should avoid doing on social media.

You may be going through a very difficult time at work, but social media is not the place where you express your feelings about it. Expressing your dissatisfaction about your job on public forums is hardly a thing that people are going to like you for. It reflects badly on your character and is not the most professional behaviour either. Additionally, anything negative you put out there about your company and your job could later be used against you, by sources you didn’t even imagine existed. So if you have any grievances that you may have about your place of work, keep it private instead of making it public.

You may think your boss is the most ignorant person on Earth, but the truth is that he/she is more clued in than you think.  Which is why, taking about your boss on social media is not the smartest thing you can do. Agreed that everyone needs to vent at some point or the other, but unfortunately when it comes to your boss, social media isn’t the place to do so. There are people out there who know you, your boss and your company and once your opinions are public, there’s nothing you can do to stop people from using it against you. Use social media to praise rather than purge.

On social media, the six degrees of separation probably gets reduced by half, which in turn makes you very exposed to people on the internet. The most personal aspects of your life should remain with you and not become accessible to everyone around the world. Remember, once your most personal conversations are out there, it doesn’t belong to you anymore, which in turn makes you vulnerable to things like identity theft, cyber-crime and in worse case scenarios, blackmail as well. This also holds true for any classified information like cell phone numbers, credit & debit card details or your home address.

Haste is never good. When you’re doing things fast without thinking you tend to make mistakes or worse, you tend to let out things that shouldn’t become public knowledge. It’s really tempting to talk about a recent break up or a tiff that you may have had, but the reality is that when you do that, you’re talking about it to the entire world as a result of which you’re making very sensitive topics, which should be kept to yourself and your close friends, public. When in such situations, take a deep breath, think about what you want to post and analyse whether it’s the best thing to do or not before hitting the ‘publish’ button.

Last but not the least, it’s very easy to say things on social media that aren’t true. You can premeditate and edit whatever you like, to the extent of creating a false persona that in reality isn’t your original self at all. While this may be the preferred thing to do at times, it might not always be the smartest thing to do. Pretending to be someone else can be fun & it’s very easy to get carried away, so much so that you can get consumed by the new personality you’ve created. But it’s wise to keep in mind that alter egos can’t exist forever and hence they are not meant for social media. Be true to others and see your popularity soar.