Personal Branding and Social Media

I recently came across an article on Yahoo!, Posting Pics Online?  What Your Photos Say About You, which claims that “Those photos you post on Facebook could paint an accurate picture of your personality, new research on first impressions suggests  And perhaps as expected, the more candid a shot the more nuances of your personality show through…The appearance one portrays in his or her photographs has important implications for their professional and social life.”

While I am not surprised of the findings, I somewhat disagree with the fact that your photos can truly depict who you are.  There will be a lot of people who have “no shame” and will post or tag candid photos of themselves and their friends.  But there are other who are conscious about their personal brand and create a persona to portray an image that they desire.

I have a friend who “un-tags” himself in photos and asked us not to tag him in any photos because he is very conscious about his image and I don’t blame him.  Scott Monty said, “What happens in Vegas stays on Google,” referring to an image of college student doing a keg stand.  The implications Scott Monty made was if an employer did a Google search on you, and saw this picture they probably wouldn’t hire you.

I know we all want to have thousands of friends on Facebook because we all want to be seen as popular and posting candid photos of yourself may increase the likelihood of people “friending” you.  But we’re all going to reach that age where we will be conscious of our self image and the things we post.  When that happens the photos you post may not tell your whole story.  It’ll only portray the person you project.

ESPN.com did a special four-part series examining the impact of online social networks on college athletics and Heather Dinich’s article, How much is too much online? looked at what colleges and universities are doing to help educate their student-athletes on their social networking interactions.

Dinich wrote about how several universities are reaching out to a third party for some guidance on social networking.  According to the article, Sports Media Challenge “has helped universities and entire conferences embrace sites like Facebook and Twitter as marketing tools and ways of branding their athletic programs, but Sports Media Challenge president Kathleen Hessert also has been asked to help some schools set social networking guidelines for their athletes.”

Coaches and administrators are worried about what their student-athletes may post and often talk to them about what is acceptable and what is not.  But is it the athletic departments job to educate and monitor their student-athletes?  Or should the student-athletes be held responsible for their own actions?

Dinich highlighted Myron Rolle from Florida State who said “For me personally, what I did, I policed my own site. I wanted people to think of me as that upstanding scholar-athlete. Anytime someone was thinking about tagging a picture of me, I’d make sure I’d look at it first and say, ‘OK, is this picture OK? Would my mother appreciate this picture?…I didn’t put any status updates that had curse words or foul language or just wouldn’t be representative of who I am and who I want to be. As much as the school can do, each individual athlete has to look at himself and say, ‘What do I want out there, and what kind of person do I want to look like on these sites?’”

It’s unfortunate that not all student-athletes think like Myron Rolle, and I can see why he is a Rhodes Scholar!  He clearly understands what Scott Monty, the Head of Social Media at Ford, meant when he said: “What happens in Vegas stays on Google.”

I honestly feel it should be up to the individual/student-athlete to monitor their own social content and interactions.  The university can hold meetings, educate their student-athletes all they want, but ultimately it’s not the athletic department who’s going to be posting.  It’s the student-athlete and it’s up to them to create their own image in which the public will view them.

So I ask you, social networking etiquette: who’s responsibility is it?  The universities athletic department?  Or the student-athlete?

A good friend of mine, Yoda808, sent me a bunch of links about a situation that has taken place between the NCAA, N.C. State, the community, and Facebook.

A freshman at N.C. State started a Facebook group in hopes of attracting a top-ranked high school basketball player from Raleigh.  According to the article, “After 700 people joined the group, this person received a cease and desist letter from N.C. State’s compliance director, Michelle Lee, warning of “further action” if he failed to take down the site since the Facebook group’s purpose violated NCAA’s recruiting policies, the Associated Press reported.

Here’s the article: NCAA Clamps Down on Facebook Group for Violating Recruiting Policies.

I’ve talked about this before on this blog about the NCAA restricting the use of social media.  I personally think the NCAA needs to update their polices to include the use social media, and to be honest I don’t think they have a clue as to what to do.  What if someone in the community, an avid fan of N.C. State who has no current affiliation with the school, created this Facebook page?  Would this person still need to take down the page?

The reason why social media has gained so much traction over the years is because it gives the ordinary person a chance to voice his/her opinion and communicate with others.  If you take away a person’s right to voice their own opinion doesn’t that violate their 1st Amendment and thus go against everything that social media is?

I’m looking at Facebook right now and I see a “Kentucky needs John Wall” fan page and this is what the description says: “This group is in no way attempting to promote Wall to UK but a group for UK fans to unite who agree that UK needs John Wall.  Do not contact John Wall or any recruit in anyway, this is a recruiting violation.”

I see Duke, UNC, Florida State, Kansas, Memphis, etc. just to name a few, so why hasn’t the school and NCAA sent out cease and desist letters?  I wish I had a chance to see the fan page.

The only reason why a Facebook fan page should be taken down, in this situation, is if there is personal contact information like a phone number, email address, IM screen names, etc.  This makes sense because you need to protect the privacy of the player.  Who wants to get 700 emails or phone calls?

Idk…to me as long as no personal information is disclosed, I don’t see why you would need to take a fan page like this down.  Again I didn’t see the fan page so I have no clue as to the content that’s on there.

What do you all think?

I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I think I’ll take on the responsibility of creating a network for all Hawaii Athletic fans that want to figure out ways to create better experiences at games, but I need your help.

I’m looking for an identifiable name for all us fans.  The students are the Manoa Maniacs, Duke has the Cameron Crazies, Fresno St. has the Dog Pound, Texas A&M has the 12th Man, etc.  I’m looking for any suggestions as to what to call this fan club.

I guess the best example I can think of is Stephen Tsai’s blog readers.  They are called the Tsaiko’s.  Something along those lines so when people hear it they know exactly who we are.

Please let me know any suggestions you have and ask your friends to visit this blog and add their suggestion to.  The more the better and it’s the first step towards launching this effort.

I really look forward to your response.