A Brief Note for Folks Who Use the Internet
Okay, so here’s another brief note. It’s becoming more and more important to maintain your online identity in ways that serve you when you are considering a new job opportunity, or when you regularly meet new folks (which happens quite a bit in ministry). Employers are more and more frequently checking every applicant online before proceeding with an interview, so it’s critical that your online identity is easy to find in the search results, that it distinguishes you from all the other folks with your name out there, and that it presents you in an honest and helpful light. With that in mind, Anna and I chose to do the following:
- Set up a website and maintain it
- Select an e-mail address that identifies us rather than our hobbies (It can be distracting for HR to respond to an e-mail address such as supermans1973corvette@someplace.something, unless you are indeed Superman’s 1973 Corvette. In which case, fly on, man. Fly on.)
- Establish a locked-down Twitter account (Limit who you follow and who follows you; make this a helpful place to shoot quick messages to close friends and family. Although, I’ll admit that I do follow Bill Cosby and Bill Gates.)
- Create landing pages (You can use these to aggregate your various internet presences into one place, making it much easier to list your online contact information on a business card; you can see what I mean here and here)
An example of Flavors.me
I’d recommend against social networks that don’t allow you to maintain careful control of the content that gets online. It’s a little worrisome that someone from high-school can post a photo of the one time you TP’d a home and everyone on Myfacespacebook can link that to you. Suddenly, potential employers find this picture at the top of the search results instead of a helpful site with your resume.
Simple sites that allow you control and let you retain ownership of the content are the best. If you are aiming for free solutions, consider the following solutions: WordPress, Blogger, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flavors.me, Google Profiles or Chi.mp. These are just a few of the options out there, but they all meet some primary goals of online activity. They are simple, they are low-maintenance, they leave control and ownership in the hands of the user, and I don’t ever find myself asking, “How did I waste a whole morning on such-and-such.” (Facebook, you know exactly who I’m talking about.)
Have fun with your online life!
Grace & Peace,
Dan J.
[...] you will remember from this post, we’ve been hesitant to create Facebook accounts. The reasons are [...]