ARE YOU MAKING THESE ONLINE MISTAKES?

If you do have colleagues following you, here are social media etiquette tips to safeguard your career:

Posting during business hours. Uploading the odd image while you’re waiting for the photocopy machine to warm up, won’t necessarily harm your career. But if you make a habit of using the company’s resources of time and Wi-Fi, you’re in problematic territory. Unless regular social media updates are one of your key performance areas, it’s better to limit your online activity to your personal time. It’s your personal account, after all.

Sharing without reading. Reposting or liking content conveys an endorsement of the whole message. Make sure you can stand by every line, hashtag and image that you put up on your account. If it’s on your profile, it might as well be words that came out your mouth.

Oversharing. Yes, it’s your account, and yes, you’re free to post what you like. But…not really! If you’ve chosen to merge the personal and the professional, then know that you’re risking overexposure on both sides. Even if your account is locked, colleagues who do have access to your account can easily screenshot or show your posts to those who don’t.

Forgetting about Big Brother. No matter how quickly it was deleted, haven’t we all been glad when a particular tweet was found and reshared to give context? If it can happen to celebrities or business leaders, it can definitely happen to you too. Big Brother, aka your boss, aka Twitter trolls, aka your frenemies, are always watching. And screenshotting!