Tag Archives: linkedin

home

Taking Control of Social Media

162 Comments

By Tracey Dowdy

Ever feel like social media is more work than it is worth? Does FOMO push you to constantly update or check your Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, Tumblr…I’m exhausted just typing that!

Maybe it’s time to take control of your social media presence instead of having it control you.

Curate your accounts

Stop and consider which aspects of social media are valuable to you and then cull the herd. Trying to stay connected to professional opportunities and trends? Go with LinkedIn. Looking to stay connected to family and friends? Facebook has well over a billion active users every month. Looking for an unfiltered, real time micro-feed of what’s happening? Choose Twitter. The key is to choose unique platforms whose features don’t overlap.

Change your habits

Is checking your phone the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night? Studies have shown that the blue light from your screen tricks your brain into thinking it’s time to get up and though you may think you’re mindlessly browsing, your brain is engaged, constantly scanning information, making it more difficult to fall asleep. Maybe you’re constantly distracted during the day, constantly checking in to see how many “Likes” the picture of your lunch got.

It’s easy to get sucked into a black hole and realize what started as a search for “Best streaming devices” has left you watching videos of models falling on the runway for the past 45 minutes. Time to change things up. Consider leaving your phone in another room at night or setting boundaries like, “I can check my Facebook after I finish these three tasks.” Little changes can make a big difference in your productivity and overall satisfaction.

Curate your feed

Take the time to go through your contacts and decide who still matters. It may sound cold, but if you’re no longer working at Company A, do you still need to have their team building posts show up in your feed? Is there someone whose posts only serve to irritate or make you feel inadequate? Time to let it go. Eliminating the accounts that are irrelevant or annoying is liberating. Not only will you no longer see their feeds, the algorithms social networks use intuitively curate your feed in such a way that you’ll see more of what is meaningful to you. Plus, it’s not as time consuming as it sounds. Apps like Crowdfire will collate your accounts and let you unfollow in bulk, while others like SproutSocial will help you search for sites and individuals that are relevant to your interests.

Schedule posts

Sites like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and Buffer can help you organize and manage your accounts. Create and schedule your updates from one location, once a day or once a week. Obviously you can jump in to make changes or post updates at any time, but they’re a great way regain control and simplify your life.

Manage Notifications

Do you really need to know every time one of your friends posts on social media? For some, it’s a welcome distraction but for others it’s well, just a distraction, minus the welcome. Take five minutes to go to your settings and turn off notifications for any – or all – those feeds. You’ll be surprised at how little you miss them.

Take a break

Finally, consider stepping back and disconnecting. A constant stream of information can become overwhelming and the good starts to get muddied by the irrelevant and the irritating. A break even for a day or two can help you reset, leaving you refreshed instead of overloaded. Disengaging may seem like a frightening prospect, but that’s also a reflection of how deep that addiction runs.

Tracey Dowdy is a freelance writer based just outside Washington DC. After years working for non-profits and charities, she now freelances, edits and researches on subjects ranging from family and education to history and trends in technology. Follow Tracey on Twitter.

 

home

Take Charge of Your Online Profile

1 Comment

In today’s world, if people want to find out more about you, they head to the Internet. It may be a prospective employer, a co-op board member, an old friend trying to look you up, or even a future date; anyone who is interested in learning more about you will jump online and open a browser.

So it’s important to ask yourself, “What are they likely to find?” Are they going to be reassured about what a fine upstanding citizen you are? Or are they going to be shocked with what Google uncovers? (Or maybe they will find nothing at all, which can also be a problem!)

I realize that you can’t control everything on the Internet but you can control some things. Every social networking site you participate in – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube – asks you to create a profile, and it’s these profile pages that are likely to come up first when someone conducts a search.

Properly managing your profile is a great way to control the message you want to put out to the world. Here are a few tips on how to present a positive image:

Be consistent. Use the same name and profile across all your social networks, so people know it’s you and you present a consistent personal brand.

Make sure your profile picture is appropriate. While photos of you drinking and partying might go down well with your old college buddies, that’s probably not the image you want to project to future employers and neighbors. Post a recent head shot – and don’t forget to smile!

Provide some background. Facebook, Twitter and all the other popular social networks give you ample opportunity to tell people more about yourself. Take advantage of that opportunity. Use the tools available to project an image and information that you are comfortable with.

Cross link to other web sites and blogs. If you want to highlight a blog or another personal web site, then make sure you cross-link to it from your other social networks. Make your best work easy to find.

Be sparing with the inside jokes. If someone needs to know you well to understand a particular comment, then perhaps it’s not for your public profile. It’s good to be cute or funny but make sure it’s a joke that everyone can share in.

Make the Internet your friend. Build a profile and control the message!

Stacey Ross on The Online Mom, home

What Happens to Your Social Media Accounts After You Die?

1 Comment

By Stacey Ross

A close friend of the family unexpectedly passed away not too long ago, and it was touching and supportive for his family and friends that we were able to honor his life online. The reality is that since more and more of our lives are going digital these days, it warrants a discussion that many of us have never given much thought to – namely “What happens to our social media accounts when we pass on?”

Here’s a brief look at how three popular social media platforms handle accounts of the deceased:

Twitter

Twitter officials will start deleting accounts after six months of inactivity, while most other social networks won’t touch your profile unless specifically asked to by a family member or an agent of law enforcement.

Twitter will work with a person authorized to act on behalf of an estate or with a verified immediate family member of the deceased (with both requiring a government-issued ID). To deactivate an account, Twitter needs the username of the deceased, a death certificate, a written explanation, a current address and the relationship to the deceased.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn will work to delete an account so that the username and password no longer work and the deceased individual’s profile is removed from the site. If you are taking action in this area, you will need to know the deceased member’s name, the company he or she worked at most recently, and provide a link to his or her profile.

It’s also helpful if you can provide LinkedIn with the member’s email address. You will be required to state your relationship to the deceased, as those without a close relationship might not be able to have the account removed.

There is a way to export the deceased user’s connections in case you have a need to contact them in the future, which can be useful for small businesses if an owner or key partner passes away.

Facebook

If you are an immediate family member, you can go through the various steps to deactivate an account or you can turn a lost loved one’s profile into a memorial page. The memorialized timeline is accessible and searchable only by friends, who will have the opportunity to post and look at pictures. Nobody would be able to tag the deceased in photos or posts, send messages, or ‘friend’ the deceased. Similarly, the account will no longer generate birthday reminders, or show up in “People You May Know” prompts.

Millions of users have died since Facebook has been around. Since Facebook won’t delete profiles on its own, it poses a viable curiosity to some that one day the dead might outnumber the living!

What about privacy?

There is an ongoing debate over the ownership of “digital assets” and the laws are still catching up with the times. Certain areas are still unclear, and different laws in different states only add to the confusion.

What do you think? When a person dies, should their loved ones should be granted access to their information, photos, videos, etc.? Some say yes, yet others have concerns about confidentiality. There are crucial legal but also practical implications which come into play when loved ones are allowed to access previously password-protected accounts.

Making provisions as to who could legally assume responsibility for your accounts could help streamline the process, as well as leaving an instruction letter with your wishes, account names, and updated passwords.

A new plan endorsed by the Uniform Law Commission proposes legislation that would automatically allow loved ones to access social media accounts (though not post from them), with an exception for wills that specifically request restricted access.

Of course, privacy activists argue that confidential information kept online should remain secure. It would be wise for online enthusiasts to create a social media will, particularly if they want their digital assets to be accessed by others.

Be proactive!

There are certainly tools available – actual websites where you can save all your passwords in a digital vault, along with instructions for your loved ones for when you die. You can even leave legacy videos or create “dead social accounts,” which enable you to communicate with people at predetermined times after your death. (Although the idea of curating information to be sent virtually once you are gone can seem a bit creepy, and could expose loved ones to digital identity crimes.)

Once these services receive proof of death, they will email passwords to people nominated by the deceased, along with any other instructions. This is a lot to “byte” off, but is well worth considering!

Meanwhile, while you are growing your digital footprint on a daily basis, give some thought to what happens after you’re gone, and to what degree you wish to maintain an online identity while you are dancing in the clouds of Heaven!

Stacey Ross is an online consultant, social media enthusiast, freelancer and owner of SanDiegoBargainMama.com. A former teacher and middle school counselor, she is now a mom of two who researches and freelances about lifestyle topics involving family and well-being.