‘Taking Care for Professional and Personal Image in Social Media.’

Friends, we are all aware that the use of social media is omnipresent. It continues to grown-up and hence we must be aware of our professional and personal image which we want to present online/ on social media. Social media enables to engage with family, friends, relatives etc anytime, anywhere. It helps us connected with people. However, while creating the IMAGE, we must understand that the Internet has a long memory that preserves the professional and personal social media interactions. And in the long run, this may prove negative to our social image.

Hence, we must be familiar with the benefits and risks, pros and cons of the use of the Internet and social media. First of all, we must be able to distinguish between what has to be personal, professional and public and accordingly maintain the PRIVACY. Further, the apt care must be taken so that the issues regarding security risk, identity theft, cyber bullying, disclosure of information, data misuse, etc. should not happen.

Furthermore, we must understand the risk of following misleading (spread rumors or controversial) information and forwarding it blindly. We must learn to identify the worthy resources.  We do not know in what way our friends and relatives will take (react or response) something that we just stated innocently on the social media.

We must be aware of our professional and personal social media image. Please go through the chart, this will help us to create or retain our professional and personal social media image.

Particulars	Professional	Personal
Account name	Your name added with the  name of the workplace	Your name may be added with the  nick name
Images	Professional photos and videos	Personal photos and videos
Bio details	Professional Information	Personal information regarding interests and hobbies
Connections	Professional connections	Choose the people with whom you want to connect
Content/Information	Share information that connects with our professional interest and sustain our business	Share information that present your private life with the loved ones

Let’s understand that the social media too has positive and negative aspects. We can share our current locations along with their photographs on social media but the social media criminals can misuse the information. The risks such as identity theft (the deliberate use of someone else's identity) or data leakage (unauthorized transfer of data), fake requests from spam profiles, profile hacking (the process of obtaining the unauthorized access to other’s profile), malicious link (it disrupt computer operation and gain access to your account/PC) etc. can trouble the Personal as well as the Professional IMAGE.  So, it is better to stop something bad from happening than it is to deal with it after it has happened. Let’s remind ourselves ‘prevention is better than cure.’