Checking Your Online Presence

Are You Continually Checking Your Online Presence?

Keeping up with all the Facebook updates from friends, indie artist tweets, etc. can be very time consuming.
Who then has the time to continually review his or her own public account info on all these social media sites?

Yes, this does seem like one more task added to an already overflowing to do list. But it is important that we all monitor the public info we’ve put online.

First, I am assuming that everyone knows never to put anything online – no matter how stringent the promised privacy options – that you couldn’t live with the world (or your boss) knowing.

For example, the person who cuts my hair told me that he fired a receptionist after she called in sick and then posted on Facebook a photo of herself in Las Vegas.

Second, things change. You may have been promoting an art gallery show that is no longer up. Have you now removed the information on your website that states the show is currently up?

What about the other blogs to which you link from your website? Have you checked these links recently? (Full disclosure: I was unpleasantly surprised when last week I checked the blog links featured on my website www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com and discovered many of the blogs are no longer active.)

Or perhaps you have such a different hairstyle or new glasses that your old social media photos no longer look like you. (I purposely had my new lenses put into my old frames so that I would not have to upload a new photo into dozens of social media sites.)

What about the link in your Twitter bio? Does it work? (I just sent a DM to someone who follows me saying the account’s hot link did not work. I got a reply DM thanking me for the info and saying the link had now been fixed.)

Rather than make this monitoring an overwhelming to do item, start with one site a day. Check that the info is correct and focused on what you are currently most interested in sharing.

For those people who are really organized, you could make an Excel document and cycle through all your accounts each month – or at least all the major accounts if you have dozens of accounts.

Obviously the most attention should go to the most important sites, and by this I mean the most important to you personally in terms of sharing your work.

And while you are checking your accounts, do take the time to consider how you can help others connected to you on those accounts. Social media is about creating relationships – and those relationships come first before promoting your work.

I always look at helping people online as paying it forward. You shouldn’t expect those people to “repay” you, but you are putting out good vibes into the world.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com
She is also the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. Click here to visit her Amazon author page at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

The U.S. Navy thriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS that she wrote with her husband will be FREE on Kindle on Tuesday, November 27th, at http://amzn.to/NUpy9o

Posted by Michele Jennae on November 25, 2012. Filed under Books,Business,Phyllis Zimbler Miller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry