"Be Mindful of Your Brand"

This week I was able to read Boundaries, Privacy, and Social Media Use in Higher Education: What do Students Think, Want, and Do? by Dr. Vanessa P. Dennen and Dr. Kerry J. Burner of Florida State University. I am about to take y first  course with Dr. Burner this fall, so It was nice to read a collaborative paper with Dr. Burner and Dr. Dennen. 

In this article, researchers wondered about the types of communications technologies students use for school and personal purposes?, How savvy they are about maintaining their privacy online?, and about their beliefs about social media use, privacy, and boundaries in a higher ed context? 

A friend of mine is always saying "be mindful of your brand." She believes that you, the person you are, elements of your personality, your beliefs, values, career goals, and the information you share publicly all add to your personal brand, and you should take efforts to maintain that brand at all times. To me, this means having the luxury of picking and choosing what elements of your life you make available to the general public, and possibly adopting multiple personas depending on who your audience may be. Personally, I'm a bit more at ease when it comes to letting the walls between my personal and professional life collapse these days. A few years ago, I could not have imagined that I would add my professor on Snapchat. I've come a long way...

While I am aware that many of my professors interact on social media, I feel that Tallahassee is overrun with students, and prefer to give them space online, in favor of communicating with them via more formal channels such as email/ phone/ or in person. (At least while I'm in their class.) If my boss contacted me via Facebook Messenger to see when I was coming into work, I would feel they'd invaded my privacy. Why? Nothing is necessarily wrong with that action. I've used the privacy settings on Facebook to enable any of my friends to send me messages. I might like their photos, but I generally would not reach out to them for work related reasons, unless it were a last resort on social media. In my mind, I'm trying to keep Facebook purely social, and being social with my boss colleagues seems okay to me. For all I know they may hate their job, and look forward to the clock striking 5pm every day so they can evacuate. I don't want to be the one to knock down any barriers they may enjoy maintaining between their personal and professional life, and so, I leave my professors be as well.

The thing is, we learn so much from each other over social media! Exhibit A: This class! Yet students are not very forward in wanting to share academic materials online. 

I have been debating with myself about whether or not I would share my blog with those outside of this course. I have limited the audience to Classmates, TA's and Professors until now. I was thinking that once I had a substantial number of posts, I might share with a larger audience, such as Facebook friends, but have also been looking forward to removing much of my digital footprint. 

Have you shared your blogs with anyone outside of class? Do you feel the general public would be interested in reading our posts? I'm not sure where I stand yet.