How to use social media to RUIN your career :


Make sure that your Facebook photos include something that could not be shown to your god-fearing grandmother, and to make sure it must be in your public timeline for everyone to see (and share). A university photo is not good enough as everyone can claim youthful exuberance, ensure that its current and within the lifetime of your recent professional experience.

For professions such as road sweeper, you may find that no one is worried unless its highly immoral/illegal, whereas if you are a primary school teacher the most minor ribald picture will cause indignation in some media ghettoes.

Tweet something that can cause a sensation in the national media, make sure that its been retweeted by 1000’s of others. No matter how silly it may have been, they do like making an example of this. Words like ‘blow’, ‘up’ and ‘riot’ seem to get a rapid response, it does have a points system, so getting all three in the same sentence hits the jackpot.

Make socially unacceptable comments on blogs, where others are sharing their experiences of some serious life challenges to inspire others. Ensure that it’s in your name or a pseudonym that can be easily traced.

Using social media to badmouth:
  • Company policy
  • A coworker
  • A corporate competitor
  • Those who like kitten videos on YouTube
  • Those serving in the armed forces
  • Someone or something that is locally culturally revered (like pie and mash, you just don’t go there).

From a commercial (therefore career perspective), try to avoid being seen to favour the products/services of a clear competitor. If you are a senior exec for a cola corporation, in a picture with a can of the competitor’s stuff connected to your lips, you have to ask what were they thinking.

You can keep the social separate from the social media, you can control your profile on the World Wide Web thingy, but you must apply a modicum of common sense.

If you are a teacher and see a camera(phone), take the pretend sexual appendage out of your hand/mouth/ear and put in down. If you need to rant, use covert terms, if you dislike a colleague, use your head, not your thumbs.

Many social media sites allow you to ‘uncheck’, ‘unlike’ and ‘untag’, you can control what you want seen or unseen. But be warned, if you do act the complete and utter fool and others film you, you may have lost control of where it goes. If this becomes an encouragement to better public and social behavior, then so be it.

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