Social Marketing Precautions

While social marketing does open up worlds of opportunity, it also opens you up to more danger. Danger, in this sense, refers to business danger as well as to personal danger. There are precautions that you must heed.

First, just as it has always been, be very careful about the personal information that you share. First, you could be exposing yourself to identity theft. Second, you could be opening yourself up to very real physical danger. Follow the rules that you have always followed in regards to sharing your personal information.

You will be judged. You will be judged on everything that you say and do online. Never doubt this. In the online business world, there is no such thing as anonymity. If you don’t take care, what you say and do can literally ruin you professionally.

You’ve probably heard that employers are now doing online searches of potential employees, and that many people lose out on jobs simply because of their online activities. This is also true from online business people.

These days, people do know how to use the Internet to find information about people, and it shouldn’t surprise you if people that you are interacting with online start searching to not only ensure that you are a real person, but also to see if there is anything bad about you on the Internet. Watch your p’s and q’s!

Be honest. Once you’ve lied on one social networking site, you will have to continue that same lie on other social networking sites. Lies always grow – and in most cases, they are uncovered eventually.

Strive to fit in – without losing your dignity. MySpace is targeted to a younger crowd. You’ve probably seen profiles there with half dressed women, raunchy songs, and lots of cursing. While you want to fit in, you don’t have to go to these extremes to do so. Just use a really cool lay-out for your profile page, add some music that will appeal to your target market (it doesn’t have to be raunchy), and use a picture. Just make sure that the picture that you use is really you.

While standing out from the crowd is a good thing in other places, it is good to kind of go with the flow on the social networking scene. Remember that you want to be different, in order to gain more attention, but fit in at the same time, to avoid being avoided. It really is a fine line to walk!