The speed of social media has been praised on various occasions, as it has been really useful for life-threatening cases. However, have you ever considered how it affects the way you are described through your social networks?
I was scrolling down my Twitter newsfeed a few days ago and I suddenly realized that every glance at a tweet may be your first impression of a person. There were people I didn’t know and a single tweet was my first “introduction” with them. This means that your whole personality must fit in 140 characters or less!
If you are using Twitter with your real name appropriate behavior is very important, no matter why you signed up for. You don’t have to be a celebrity or a politician to double check your tweets before posting them. If you want to be taken seriously into consideration on any aspect of your expertise, you need to use Twitter wisely. This doesn’t mean that you should become too serious or even imitate somebody else. Just keep in mind that even a RT could be considered insulting, vulgar, racial, or politically incorrect for some of your followers, leading to their misjudging you for no reason.
In the era of social media, your digital presence is part of yourself. Just imagine a case that an employer finds your CV interesting and makes a quick social media search about you. What if he sees on top of your newsfeed a tweet that makes him reject you with no second thought? Or how about a client?
Never forget that your digital personality is more important than ever and everything that you post stays out there, either for good or bad reasons. If you keep that in mind from now on, everything would be easier!
Did you ever catch yourself misjudging a person from random posts?