Social Media Week

For social media week, I choose to use a Twitter account to connect with other Hixsons, Iowa State organizations, and professionals in my career path. I have been on Twitter for about a year and a half, but I have never thought of it as a way to connect with professionals and organizations, but rather as a way to connect with my friends and share some of my experiences and thoughts. By engaging in this week, I have seen how beneficial social media can be, rather than just a time waster. I think online social media gets a bad reputation most of the time, particularly by the older generations. I don’t think they fully understand just how helpful it has been in today’s age of technology or what its total capabilities are.  To be completely honest, I didn’t even know some of its capabilities and I’m a frequent user!

The articles really showed me how effective having a social media account, particularly Twitter, can be for finding a career. It’s an easy way to find potential employers and a way to give them an idea of who you are. It’s pretty easy to Google search anyone’s name and find what websites they are a part of.  For that reason, it’s extremely important to know what your online identity looks like and how you want it to look. I know too many people that use their accounts to vent about people they don’t like, to share where they drank at, or to curse about anything and everything. As far as I’m concerned, that does not look professional and you could share that by text message to a close friend if you really need to tell someone. That way, it’s between the two of you and not between you and Twitter’s other million users. 

Social media can also be helpful when trying to spread news fast. In one of the articles, I read about how certain countries, like Mexico, use it share important messages. This makes a lot of sense to me because things on Twitter always seem to spread like wild fire. Most people check their accounts at least once every few hours, but people usually watch one newscast a day. Retweets from news stations like CNN, make it easy to know that you are getting reliable information and you don’t have to worry about hearing it from one someone else who may or may not know all of the facts. Another organization, FEMA, went to Twitter to inform those affected by Hurricane Irene about when or if they should evacuate, when it was safe to go back, and how to get help if needed.

  

Finally, I read another article that talked about something different than just how social media can be helpful for you. They took the opposite perspective and talked about how Facebook, a very popular website, can hurt you by making you become annoyed with your friends. Personally, I deal with this daily as some of my friends seem to post statuses about unimportant and somewhat stupid things. In other circumstances, people will post things that they would be too shy or embarrassed to say in person.  For whatever reason, there is an increased confidence level when there is a computer screen between you and the person that you could be attacking. Cyber bullying is a huge issue that many are trying to raise awareness for. Hopefully, it will be stopped as it negatively affects too many young kids. 

In conclusion, I think that social media will be what you make of it. If you want to use it as a professional account, watch what you say and make a positive image for yourself. If you want to use it to just connect with old friends that is great too. Just remember that it has your name on it and can easily be found by any and all future employers.