Shockingly, it has recently been revealed that one in five employers have rejected a prospective job candidate because of something they have seen in their online history, and so the correlation between social media and business success has never been more apparent.Potential employers have greater access to you than ever before. You’re no longer simply a written CV – the way that you present yourself online really is paramount. It all boils down to ‘invisible PR’ – something that we all need to be aware of. In this digital age, we actually need to view ourselves as a brand.
For me, Invisible PR is what people think of you and say about you when you’re out of the room. It’s a series of tiny, often seemingly inconsequential things, which, when combined, matter hugely. This is the subconscious image that you and your brand shares to everyone who comes across it. It’s your reputation and how others will decide to view you for years, even decades, to come.
Business success hinges on our invisible PR and for that reason it’s absolutely vital that our social media doesn’t negatively impact this. There are are a number of ways in which we can clean up our social media in order to aid business success:
‘Sometimes posting on social media is so easy and because it just involves typing on an electronic device, it’s not the same as actually telling someone in person to judge their reaction and gauge if it’s a bit risque, inappropriate, offensive, or even just ill-judged. So before you go to repost a funny meme that someone has shared, or make a light-hearted comment with some obscenities in it, try and think about how your mum would react if you shared it with her first. It helps to remind us that real people are reading and viewing what we are posting, and some may be more conservative in their views than us.
‘Being under the influence of alcohol can affect our judgment and is more likely to see you post something with inappropriate, ill-judged or offensive content. It might only be intended as light-hearted fun, but if a tutor or potential employer sees it then they won’t necessarily be aware of the context and it could seriously damage their image of you.’
‘It’s something that I see again and again on social media and it’s a huge red flag to potential employers. Everyone makes typos from time to time and that’s acceptable, however if you’re considering employing someone and then you see on their social media that they are consistently posting content with poor spelling, grammar and punctuation then it’s guaranteed to make them think twice.’
This is the most common reason for employers turning someone down for a job opportunity and it’s a really easy thing to avoid doing.
‘Some people are confused by the word ‘brand’, because whilst you might not be a big-name brand like the ones we all come into contact with in daily life, each of us as individuals are our own ‘brand’. By this I mean that everything we do projects an image to others of who we are. It’s crucial to make sure your ‘brand’ is a good one, as people never forget bad ones!’
Sophie Attwood is the the founder and Managing Director of Sophie Attwood Communications – a global PR agency representing the trailblazers within the health and wellness, beauty and medical aesthetics industries. With clients in the UK, Australia, Dubai and the US, she’s worked exceptionally hard to curate a portfolio of exceptional brands for which she develops innovative, creative strategies to enable their clients to take their communication strategy to the next level.
