Social media was introduced to me quite early in my adolescence, having used websites such as Bebo and MySpace.
As the years progressed, and more mediums were introduced, I’ve eventually signed up to many of them: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and the like.
Mostly these have been used for personal use, although within my studies (Sports Media / Journalism), this could very well become a high priority in the professional life, hence why I’ve picked this unit.
Facebook is something I mainly use just to interact with friends, and family, mostly to show them funny pictures. My use with Snapchat and Instagram are also the same.
However with Twitter, my usage is a bit different, as it is something that I more or less follow for news updates, and updates on other things I follow, such as sport, television, and other methods of entertainment, however recently, this has taken on a bit more use.
Having recently taking to publishing online sports articles, I have been using Twitter to share these to my followers, meaning I would have to start taking a more professional use of Twitter, compared to earlier years, where I’d just share one line jokes.
Identifying Challenges and Issues
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Personally
- Too much public access to personal information
- Large social networking tree
The first issue can be linked to the professional challenges as well, mainly due to privacy issues.
When the type of things that I post online could clash with any professional ideals that I should have online, it would be ideal to keep these separate.
Which, links to my large social networking tree.
As Facebook is what I tend to use the most, on a personal level, my large networking tree could become an issue, in terms of keeping private things, just that: private.
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Professionally
- Heading towards the end of my studies, my social media presence may need some tweaking, heading out into the professional world.
- My Facebook profile features many pictures from events that prospective employers probably wouldn’t find professional.
As mentioned above, it would be ideal to keep my personal and professional social media footprints separate, just as you would in real life at pretty much any level.
The thing is, many people fail to do this, as they use their social media presence to link their personality to their professional world, particularly for athletes, and this brings about many risks.
Many sporting stars have had many run-ins with how they present themselves online, with one example being ex-Canberra Raiders player Josh Dugan, now of the St. George-Illawarra Dragons.
Due to codes of conduct in place due to his employment, he continuously breached these with outbursts aimed towards fans who did not like the way he was imaging himself in the public, and one incident where he posted a picture consuming alcohol whilst skipping a training session.
With codes of conduct and the like implemented in both the NRL and individually at the Canberra Raiders, Dugan risked his employment and career with posts like this (http://resources3.news.com.au/images/2013/03/31/1226595/558407-dugan.gif) and then further damaged his career initially after his contract with the Raiders was terminated, and was on the verge of signing with the Brisbane Broncos when this (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/nrl/josh-dugan-launches-vile-social-media-attack-on-fans/story-e6frexnr-1226609810233) happened.
In recent times, since signing with the Dragons, Dugan appears to have cleaned up his image considerably, however the mark left over the past couple of years seems to have tainted his public image, especially here in Canberra.
This example shows that when using social media, to use it responsibly in a way that will not damage your image personally or professionally, as well as your employer, and to keep wary of any codes of conduct that you are subject to.
The risks that using social media like this are shown in this diagram, the Honeycomb of Social Media Functionality, in Kietzman et al’s paper Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media (2011).
Insert Diagram here
Strategies for online engagement
To combat the issues stated above, it would probably be beneficial to do the following things:
- Make my personal social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) more private, so that only people that I want to see my private information and people I know, can actually see them.
- Separating my personal profiles from my professional ones. At this stage, Twitter would be more likely to be featured as a professional social media outlet for myself, even at this stage, where trial run articles are being published and shared via my Twitter account.
- Limiting my large social networking tree, which, by my standards, has gotten out of control over the years, although the lack of a ‘mass delete’ button on Facebook has now led to me not being bothered to actually go through and remove people from my profiles that do not need to be on there.
On top of this, the following can also be done:
Engaging with the wider media coverage that can be brought with hashtags and word of mouth (WOM) to work published online. This can be done through microblogging, which is explained in detail in Jansen et al’s journal Twitter Power: Tweets as Electronic Word of Mouth (2009), and many strategies that can be used to ‘microblog’ to great effect, such as keeping Tweets short and to the point, and using terminology that can engage those who come across these things on social media.
- Utilising new and varied platforms of social media to spread said work.
References
Kietzman, J.H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I.P., Silvestre, B.S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons 54, 241-251.
Jansen, B. J., Zhang, M., Sobel, K., & Chowdury, A. (2009). Twitter Power: Tweets as Electronic Word of Mouth. JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 60(11), 2169-2188.
