Contents

3 - Intro

5 - Don’t Post In Anger

6 - Vary your friend privacy settings

8 - Respect the rules

9 - Clean up your act

11 - A picture says a thousand words

12 - Don’t stretch the truth

13 - Show your best side

14 - Finally, remember you're amassing digital content every day of your life

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Entering the world of work today is a very different experience compared to what it was ten let alone 20 years ago.

A decade ago, you would have had a computer and most probably an email address. You may or may not have had access to the Internet. Assuming your workplace allowed it, surfing the web was a more pedestrian (not to mention slower) experience than it is today.

As a result, the way you interacted with people online was what you might call point to point. If you had a bad day at work, you might email your partner or a friend about it. That would be the end of it.

Today, you'll be entering an environment where the chances are most of your workmates are on Facebook and / or other social networks like Twitter and the photo-sharing service Instagram.

Those networks in turn have become very often the default channel for us to express our thoughts and feelings to friends, family, and (in the case of a network like Twitter) very often complete strangers.

Social media use now spans all age groups and so in a lot of cases, you'll actually be sharing your online opinions with your boss or potential future employers.

As part of AVG’s on-going "Digital Diaries" studies, which looks at how technology impacts different areas of our lives, we polled 4,500 18-25 year olds in eleven countries across the globe to see how they use social media at work.

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A quarter of respondents overall – and as many as a third in the USA alone - told us they were Facebook friends with the boss. In the vast majority of cases, this is most likely perceived as just normal office interaction; however, it also means that what these individuals do socially outside of work is also visible to the person who ultimately manages them.

Social media opens up both challenges and opportunities for anyone currently in or applying for their first job.

At AVG, we've put together some suggestions to help you shine online with your current and any future employer in mind.

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Don’t post in anger

It sounds obvious, but it is a golden rule that is not always observed. One in eight 18-25 year olds told us that they'd been abusive about their boss or employer after a bad day at work.

Depending on what you post and what company rules are, this could get you in trouble. In a worst case scenario, such comments could actually get you disciplined or even fired. Not only could this cause problems in your current job, it is also possible that it may affect your future career prospects as well.

What is the likelihood of this actually happening? Put yourself in the shoes of a future employer who searches your social media profiles and finds unflattering comments about your place of work.

They’ll be wondering: If you have done that in the past, then who is to say you won't do it again in your new job? It marks you out as a loose cannon and someone who can't be trusted to follow the most basic rules, let alone respect company confidentiality.

As a result, before posting anything at all related to your place of work, take a step back and try to understand if this something you would feel comfortable saying out loud in the middle of the office? If not, don't post.

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Vary your friend privacy settings

Most (80 percent) of the 18-25 year olds we surveyed said they do restrict their Facebook profiles to friends only. However, that still means 20 percent have Facebook profiles that are completely open for everyone to see.

However, far fewer (40 percent) distinguish between what information Facebook friends who are also work colleagues can see on their profiles and what they post for their personal friends.

The distinction is a crucial one as the definition of a Facebook friend can vary greatly. It can be your best friend or your spouse. It can be someone you last saw in school ten years ago. It can be someone you met once at a conference. Or, increasingly, it can be someone you work with.

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In fact, Facebook tells us that someone who joined the network two years ago will now have an average of 305 friends. That's a lot of people who can look at (and potentially re-share) what you are posting on a daily basis.

Facebook allows you to group your friends into lists and selectively share content. To see how it’s done, check out the FAQs on the Facebook site.

Facebook already lets you group friends into close friends, acquaintances and "restricted" lists as a default. Facebook specifically tells us that the latter might apply to your boss.

People on your restricted list can only see your public profile and posts and anything you tag them in - in other words, the bare minimum.

You can also create custom lists, for example, if you wanted to group people at work into different offices or departments. The fact is the ability to filter content on Facebook is already there.

Finally, if you are on Google+, make use of the circles which allow you to group your contacts. Create one for your work colleagues and any looser connections. Create another for people with whom you really do feel comfortable sharing more widely.

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Respect the rules

The chances are your new workplace will have a set of rules about how you can and cannot use social media at work. A third of young adults told us that their workplace actually restricts or bans access to social networks.

Even if your employer hasn't published these rules, you'll still be covered by what it says in your contract. In particular, there are three things to look out for:

1 - Confidentiality: If you mention in online forums what you are doing at work, are you giving away any company secrets?

2 - Bringing your employer into disrepute: If pictures appear of you "over-indulging" at the office party, you could fall foul of this.

The same applies if you post opinions or comments on websites that a lot of your workmates could find offensive (e.g. comments deemed to be racist, sexist or homophobic).

3 - Intellectual property: It is worth remembering that most employment contracts have clauses saying that what you produce or create at work belongs to the employer.

Again, use commonsense. If you were standing in a crowded train or bus, would you feel comfortable talking about some of the things you have posted online especially if your workplace is involved? If no, then don't say it.

Finally, using your own personal accounts to share inappropriate comments isn't an excuse. If you give away trade secrets via your own Twitter account, that's still a breach of your work contract.

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Clean up your act

In our study, we found that less than half (43 percent) of young adults had done an online audit of their social media accounts and cleaned out any embarrassing or incriminating information.

For the 57 percent who haven't done this, this should be something they should be doing regularly. If you fall into this category, here are a few tips to get you started:

1 - Use Google. As a first step, search for yourself on Google and set up a Google alert on your name.

Remember to allow for misspellings. If your name is Claire, also search for Clare. If you are Robyn, search for Robin and so on. Search for e.g. "Clare Smith" as well as Clare Smith and Clare + (the name of your employer).

Then set up a Google alert, so you get a notification in your inbox whenever there's a mention about you online (google.com/alerts).

If you have a Google account, then use the Google Dashboard to search for mentions of your name and your email address. If you don't have one, create one, as this is a very useful service.

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2 - Use other services for social media searches. There are a number that allow you to search for social media mentions of yourself. One example is Social Mention while another is Who's Talkin.

Twitter also has a straight forward search function - search.twitter.com.

3 - Don’t use silly names for your social media profiles. Ideally your social media profiles should be consistent (so that someone can find you easily) and use an ID that is fairly close to your own name.

In some circumstances, you might not want to use your own name, but use a description of what you do, for example @johneditor.

However, @iluvjustinbieber might not give someone the right impression when applying for a job! Twitter and other social networks actually allow you to change your ID so you can overcome such youthful indiscretions.

4 - Look at your content from the point of view of an employer. Now that you've seen what's publicly available about you, how would a potential employer view it? Is there anything you think is embarrassing or you'd really rather not be there for everyone to see? If so, the next step is toaddress this.

5 - Remove incriminating content if you can. Unhappy with a comment you posted in anger on a blog? Some will let you remove it. Don't want everyone to see that photo a Facebook friend posted? Untag yourself. Do you think in retrospect you shouldn't have sent that tweet? Delete it.

Note, deleting a tweet won't prevent someone seeing it if it’s already in their feed. However, it will remove it from Twitter search.

6 - Take control of your own online reputation. The final step is to try to positively influence what appears about you when people search your name. There are a few ways to doing this. We'll talk a little later about creating a personal online hub, or blog.

If you are really motivated, there is also evidence that an active profile on Google Plus (Google's social network) will help your search rankings, if you are also a prolific writer online and use Google Authorship to claim and group your writing. Kiss Metrics has a useful guide on their blog about how to do this here.

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A picture says a thousand words

There's that famous saying that a picture says a thousand words and indeed, there is research that people will be 100 percent+ more likely to interact with a Facebook post that includes a photo.

Especially with more and more of us using our smartphones as our main camera, a lot of social media posts now contain a visual element. In two years, the mobile photo sharing network Instagram has grown to 100+ million users. If you use Instagram, that content will be completely public, unless you've decided to lock your account.

Meanwhile on Facebook, 300 million photos are posted a day.

If you post pictures on your social networks, remember you're essentially providing a visual diary of what you do on a day-by-day basis.

As a result, take care when posting any kind of content. Take extra care with pictures.

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Don’t stretch the truth

For a lot of people, a profile on the professional social network LinkedIn is starting to replace the standard CV. LinkedIn is a certainly great network for anyone looking to build their career.

It's a good place to show off your professional achievements, an excellent place to connect with people who can help you in your career, and increasingly, a useful place to search for jobs.

Don't however be tempted to stretch the truth when creating your profile and exaggerating your achievements.

Even a future employer does take every word you've written at face value, remember that most companies still ask for references. So if you've said anything that's not true, you'll risk being found out at the final stage.

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Show your best side

Finally, and possibly most importantly, it’s not all bad news. A good online footprint can actually enhance your job prospects.

1 - Use LinkedIn and don't be afraid to ask for recommendations. We've already mentioned the professional social network LinkedIn. If you haven't got a profile, create one, and start connecting with everyone you've ever worked with or been to school / college with.

LinkedIn has a very useful 'new starter' guide to help you on your way which you can find here.

Once you've built your profile and connections, don't be afraid to ask for a recommendation. These can come from people who have managed you, co-workers and previous suppliers / customers. Crucially, if you don't like what they've said about you, it won't appear on your profile.

2 - Group your social media profiles in one place. Flavors.me and About.me are examples of online hubs you can create to showcase all your different profiles and content.

For example, once you have created about.me/yourname, you can then add in all your various social networks as well as write a short biography about yourself.

These profiles will help your search ranking and About.me has published a few simple steps to help here.

3 - Run a blog. If you write online, or if you have some kind of hobby or interest you'd like to showcase, think about creating a blog.

There are several alternatives here - Blogger and Wordpress are the traditional blogging platforms and work well with the written word. However, the world's most popular blogging platform is now Tumblr, which is both very visual and has a more informal scrapbook style. Tumblr, and a newer alternative, Jux, work well especially if you have pictures or imagery you want to share.

Why can having a blog assist your career? First of all, it’s another way to positively influence your search profile. It also gives a potential employer an insight into your personality and (where appropriate) your writing style. It makes you much more three dimensional to anyone considering you for a job.

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Finally, remember you're amassing digital content every day of your life

Every day, by posting, commenting, sharing, you are adding to the information that exists about you.

In a year, that could amount to hundreds of different pieces of content that are around. Fast-forward ten years and according to Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, you’ll be sharing 1000x what you are now!

What do you want all this digital content to say about you?

How easily do you want it to be discovered? What can you do, to make sure that the bits that are publicly accessible and will help you in your personal and professional life?

These are questions that shouldn't be left to chance, instead, your digital footprint is something you should be actively managing as more and more people will be getting their first impressions about you online.

For more information on AVG Digital Diaries, go to www.avgdigitaldiaries.com

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