Beware What You Share! Make The Most Of What You Post!

Never think that what you produce in Web 2.0 will go un-noticed. Someone, somewhere will notice! This is why you must be careful what you put out into the world wide web. Make sure that your products are as factual as possible. More than likely, someone will call you out if you are the slightest bit misinformed. And for goodness sake, try your best to be grammatically correct! Nothing will hurt your social media credibility like spelling errors or using the wrong words. I have been guilty of pointing out mistakes on my friend's facebook or MySpace posts. In the same respect, I don't mind if someone corrects me. I feel that we use Web 2.0 so much these days that we have forgotten to put an emphasis on sounding smart. It takes no time to write a quick tweet or update your facebook page, but until you remove your blooper-filled blog, it is out there for everyone to judge.

There are many internet sites that can help you with your spelling and grammar:

http://dictionary.reference.com/

http://thesaurus.com/

http://www.grammarbook.com/

http://www.spellcheck.net/speller/

If you are a part of the new new media community, then you should be aware that employers and potential employers are watching! No matter what you post, you are marketing yourself. Listing where you are employed, where you go to school, or where you go to church, makes you a representative of these organizations. So be careful not to offend or make your company look bad. Don't turn out like this lady!

Don't fret! If you are smart, careful and creative, what you produce on new new media can have positive results too. Take me for example. As many of you know, I am an administrator on the Atlanta Humane Society's facebook page. Last Friday was one of my days to post and I could not think of anything for my first entry. Knowing that Valentine's Day was right around the corner, I decided to upload a cute picture of a kitten peeking out of a paper heart. I asked our facebook fans to click "Like" if their pets were their Valentines. This is what it looked like:

Click "Like" if your pet is your Valentine!

Although it was a short, simple post, it received more "Likes" than any other post I have ever published. I believe it was successful because it was short and had an attention grabbing photo. Many people scroll through posts and ignore text only statuses or long videos. We live in a fast paced world and if you don't provide some rapid, visual stimuli your post might get passed by. It was quick to read, therefore, people were quick to "Like".

Apparently, our Atlanta Humane Society facebook fans were not the only ones paying attention. The ASPCA featured this single post on their 10 Valentine's Day Campaign blog! Click here and scroll down to see my post featured: http://www.aspcapro.org/blog/2011/02/10-valentine’s-day-campaigns/

Remember! Beware what you put out there in the Web! But if you play your cards right, you might just impress someone!