Managing Your Personal & Professional Social Profiles (Part 3)
Join our own @MaryLeeS as she discusses how Social Media Privacy is really now Search Privacy bit.ly/IPSocMed2 ^MLS #privacy
— Intrapromote (@intrapromote) January 25, 2012
Part Three: Social Media Privacy has morphed into Search Privacy
This post is the third in a five part series addressing the management of one’s personal and professional social media profiles. (Did you miss Part 1 and/or Part 2?)
Most of us are quite familiar with Facebook and its ever changing Privacy Settings. We know that every time there is a Facebook update, we need to go in and deactivate whatever changes they made arbitrarily – we know the drill. But when is the last time you updated your Google Profile? Have you delved into your Google+ Privacy settings? What about your other Social Media profiles? Why does it matter?
Last week, Linda O’Neill discussed Intrapromote’s POV on Google Search Plus Your World with Erik Dafforn. In what Erik describes as “One of the most dramatic changes to search results in years”, Google has significantly increased the input of certain social signals for certain users. What does this have to do with Privacy? Depending upon how you have your privacy settings set up on your social media accounts, your profiles will be showing up more prominently in Google Search Results than ever.
Take this quick search for Intrapromote’s illustrious President, Erik Dafforn, as an example:
You will notice the following:
- Erik’s Google+ profile shows up in instant search results
- Erik’s LinkedIn & Twitter accounts are listed prominently
With Google having the largest market share (66.6% in December 2011) by far, it is important to take a closer look at your Google Profile Privacy settings.
First of all, if you want Personal Results to show up in your Search results on Google, you do have to opt in. You may do this in your Search Settings as seen below.
Now that you have Personal Results turned on for Search, what is the easiest way to manage all of your different profiles? Fortunately, Google has Google Dashboard to manage all of your profiles associated with Google products. From your Google Dashboard you may currently manage settings for your Google Profile, Google Analytics, Android Devices, Android Market, Blogger, Buzz (yes it’s still listed!), Calendar, Chrome, Contacts, Docs, Friend Connect, Gmail, Google Music, Google+, iGoogle, Latitude, Picasa Web Albums, Reader, Google Talk, Google Chat, Google Voice, YouTube and any other Google product that you may have signed up for!
Check out this video about the Google Dashboard below:
Google Privacy also has a YouTube channel, which is a great resource for further information on the topic.
Although Google related profiles are very important, that is not all you need to look at. As we found with our search of Erik above, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles regularly rank high in search results.
Especially in regards to business, LinkedIn is a profile that most of us would WANT to show up in search results. LinkedIn has a newly re-designed settings page with privacy options prominently displayed as shown below:
When it comes to Twitter, it really depends upon what you are using Twitter for (personal vs. professional). Twitter does not have a lot of privacy features aside from protecting your tweets from public view. As a good rule of thumb, never Tweet anything that you would not want seen by the world (including employers and journalists). You never know when a national publication may pick up and quote your tweet on a subject and always assume potential employers are searching for your Twitter account to review. In Part 1 of this series, there’s a good example of how this can backfire on you — especially if potential employers or customers are using tools like Rapportive.
And don’t leave out your new Social Media accounts as well! It is generally a good practice to search out privacy settings in each network when you first set up your account. You may have caught Intrapromote’s Katie Hehn and her recent blog post about Creating a Unique Brand on Pinterest. Interestingly, Pinterest has just one Privacy Setting and it is all about Search!
How you have your privacy settings set on your social media profiles is now more important than ever. After all, you will probably prefer that a potential employer find your polished LinkedIn profile over your Milli Vanilli Fan Pinboard….”Girl you know it’s true!”
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SEO Best Practices & The Water Army
“Water Army” Floods The Web
Like some of the most famous hired hands in history — the Greek mercenaries bought by the Persians or Nottingham purchasing the help of Celtic warriors in the tale of Robin Hood — there has been a plot a foot in China consisting of a hired army. This inappropriate and immoral group has been labeled a Water Army, as they are “flooding” the internet with comments, reviews, stories and any other user generated content that can be utilized to drive up product sales and fight off competitors. Sadly, this tactic is more like water torture as it’s used in our realm of Search Engine Optimization and Link Development.
Here at Intrapromote we like to reinforce our ideals and reassure our SEO tactics to be of great value, and morally sound. It’s important for us to bring these immoral and misleading tactics to light, and reassure the good people of society that there is a team of “good guys” out there in their fight for web supremacy.
Paid Posting Business (Nonsense)
A team of researchers from the University of Victoria in Canada led by Cheng Chen, analyzed data and even went undercover to learn all that they could of this Paid Posting business. Chen and his team ultimately utilized this data and the strategies of these companies to develop software that identified with great accuracy (88 percent) paid posters from genuine posters on sites that had thousands of comments. Some of the interesting details they found included:
- Paid posters post more comments than they do replies to already existing comments
- Paid posters also on average post every two and half minutes
- Paid posters cut and paste a very large amount of their posts as they are paid by the number of posts they produce.
Does this sound like anyone you know, or any site you have visited recently?
Seo best practices are like a good roast beast.
It’s common to find websites and companies that promise you bulk results, including your name and url on thousands of websites. But just like many things, quality is better than quantity. It is known that Google gives more weight to links that have relevant quality content, so does it do you any good to have a link on a sporting goods store if you are a small business music store? Not much, as mentioned by our relative link development specialist Bobby Pham here.
Good SEO = Good Whoville Roast Beast
Yes we all want numbers and results, but it’s proven that SEO is like a good Whoville roast beast, it takes a significant amount of time to cook if you really want it to be good! How long will it be before Cheng Chen and the group at the University of Victoria has their software integrated into Google, Yahoo and Bing, not to mention all of the online retailers like Ebay, Amazon, and anyone else with an online retail presence? They are all continuing to evolve and soon will know how to combat misleading and immoral reviews and comments. It’s inevitable.
These misleading paid posters and their false, skewed comments and content are like the kids from elementary school that are always trying to cut in line. It works for a while until finally someone bloodies their nose! It’s really a test of patience in order to reach long term prosperity and SEO success, and to accomplish this we must integrate best practices and the best long term strategies. These include verifying quality link placement, doing the social media leg work, and optimizing your site’s content to connect with the market you’re targeting.
And I think I know a company that’s pretty excellent at this…
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Managing Your Personal & Professional Social Profiles (Part 2)
Part Two: Space Invaders – Managing your Personal and Professional Social Media Time
This post is the second in a five part series addressing the separation of one’s personal and professional social media profiles. (Did you miss Part 1?) 
Is it wrong to access personal social media accounts during the workday? No, but it does boil down to time management and common sense. The time suck that social media sites can play in your life is no secret. How many hours have you spent on Facebook or Twitter in the last week? Not only keeping up with friends and family, but playing games like Cityville and Texas Holdem Poker as well! For many, we’re spending more time than ever at home using social media. But what about the time it’s taking up in the workplace?
According to the ODM Group Infographic below, 77% of workers who have a Facebook account use it during work hours and 87% of these workers have no clear business case for accessing the network. This might mean a missed phone call, delayed responses to urgent e-mails and definitely means that it takes longer to accomplish routine tasks.
Most companies have now created social media policies. Have you thought about creating one for yourself to help you manage your time on social media responsibly?
A Personal Social Media Policy
So what should you think about when creating a personal social media policy? Check out the following tips for focusing your time on social media during work hours:
- Is there a business case? Social media is a powerful networking tool and should not be overlooked. Become an authority in your field on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ & Facebook!
- Manage your time efficiently – there is nothing wrong with a quick RSVP to a personal evening event, however, watch how much time you spend during work hours keeping up with your newsfeed and social games.
- With that in mind, schedule “break time” to check your newsfeeds and make that super sweet move on Words With Friends! It’s great to take that time to clear your head and relax a bit during the work day.
- Use a social media monitoring tool, such as Hootsuite, to effectively manage your time across multiple social media profiles and accounts (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) from one single location.
Bottom Line – Be smart and don’t let unproductive personal social media time invade your workspace. #worksmart
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Responsibility: Now in Social Form!
It seems that everyone is talking about Corporate Social Responsibility these days and every company is striving to become more socially responsible. But what does it mean to be socially responsible? Like so many things these days, there is no one answer to that question.
It means respecting your fellow coworkers. We try very hard to promote a friendly and family-oriented work place, one that is built on a foundation of respect. I remember my first grade teacher always said that if you want respect, you have to give respect. That’s a pretty easy rule to remember and in my experience, it’s pretty effective.
It means using greener materials, reducing our reliance on paper, offering telecommuting options and using equipment that requires less energy. For one thing, my desk is already cluttered enough, I don’t need any extra paper on it.
It means following the rules; not just the rules of the company but the rules of the industry. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sick of hearing of these large companies who lied to their employees and left them in ruins while the CEOs received million dollar bonuses. Sounds like a few people skipped the ethics meeting. As for the industry, that means understanding the guidelines set out by various sites and companies (ahem, Google). We want to ensure that we never put our clients or ourselves in a questionable position because we “didn’t know the rules”. That is not an excuse. We expect every employee to know what is acceptable and what isn’t and we make it a priority to stay up to date on the latest information.
It means giving back to the world in which we live. I believe that we all have a duty to give back to the world and I look forward to exploring more opportunities for Intrapromote to do so, whether it’s supporting an employee who is running in a cancer research race, donating to a cause that’s important to a client or sponsoring a local event, there are endless opportunities. Many of our employees volunteer in their own communities and we are currently looking at various ways to support this.
As Intrapromote continues to grow, we plan to increase our social responsibilities and you’ll be able to read about them, right here.
