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Lesson Info

Your Cyber Reputation

have you revealed too much? Are you worried about cyber shame? Are there any embarrassing photos of you online? Well, I actually think that one's kind of cool. Kudos I stock for that. I wouldn't be embarrassed it all by that photo, so it's kind of fun, but I want you to think about you know, the Internet's kind of like a small town with global reach, and it never forgets. And there's good and bad about that. So anytime I talk about social media, I think it's important to at least kind of acknowledge that for all the positive, wonderful aspects of social media, there are some challenges that people sometimes face. And there are things that sometimes end up very publicly display that maybe we wish weren't shared. And there are things that happen that aren't always exactly what we want. And there are people who aren't always doing what they say they are doing. So Astro turf ng. If you think about the Astro turf in a football stadium, right, that's kind of fake grass. So the idea of Astro ...

turf ing is creating a fake grassroots movement. So one thing that I've seen on a global phenomena was early in the days of the Internet. Government started realizing that they could. They should just shut this thing down. You know, it shares information. You should just stop it. And then they started to realize that if they just tried to censor it, sometimes that actually brought more attention to it. And it pushed people to get even more creative about getting around censorship and brought more attention to causes. And so they flipped that around to doing something called Astro turf ing, which is about flooding social media with whatever they want to be in there. So one of the notorious things in the last few years was the elections in Russia, and I spent some time in Russia years ago. And when Putin was up for re election, all due respect to their political leadership, it was clear that many of the things that were positively being posted about him were from fake Twitter accounts. And I'll give you some tips for how you identify fake accounts. But most of them are pretty easy to find. They weren't more than a couple days old, they didn't have more than a couple followers, and there were dozens and dozens and dozens of them all timing in on the same thing. If you start to see that on any topic, it's pretty clear that somebody is behind it who isn't being sincere and authentic. And I think it's important to just be aware that that that that's happening, there's a another term we use called sock puppet. I kind of like that. The right like it just kind of makes you think about it. And this is a word of caution to to bloggers, people who are trying to build a platform. You know, you start trying to build social media and you feel like it takes a while to build up followers, you know, and it's 100 followers a lot. It's followers. A lot is 100,000 followers. Enough at one point. At what point do you feel like you're important enough? You've gotten enough followers, right and sock puppets are a shortcut that some people use to try and make themselves look more popular than they are. They go and they create another profile with somebody else's name, then they use that to comment on. They're blogging about how great they are, and it may seem kind of harmless to create a couple profiles and use them to comment on your own stuff. And it may seem like a way to kind of get things started and boost your own reputation, and you may get away with it. I I don't make a huge judgment about it, but I have seen a number of people lose their high profile positions for doing it. Perhaps most notably, ah, blogger I won't name who was hired by the Los Angeles Times somewhat controversial in the hiring, hiring in the first place. But when it was discovered later that he was using sock puppets to comment on his own block posts, he was fired very quickly. So the consequences of trying to shortcut your social media growth can be more serious than you realize and can be more problematic than you might understand. And it's not a bad idea to make sure that the people following you are rial. If you want to check that, you can go. Teoh figures that status people dot com or just Google fake followers Twitter and you will get this tool that goes out and tries to measure whether the people who are following you are fake or not. Um, I tested this last night just to see what it didn't. It's a 2% of my followers or fake 2%. That's a pretty low number. But it still made me think, Jeez, I gotta go through and figure out our if you've got 20% 30% 40% fake followers. You really want to think about clearing out that list and trying to identify who those are there some things in this tool that will try and help you do that? So how do you verify? Ah, profile online. Anybody got a story about a fake follower? Jessica. How did I know? Because I there's something Your expression there is like you have a story to tell it. Well, it's actually just, uh, followed car curry. Curry and I got back a notification that it wants me to verify through something. And that's why I was Yeah, you, actually, Can you double check that notification? That might be another tool I should mention. Shari is very careful about making sure that she's connecting with real people on being legitimate about that. And there are she does, and some people do when you follow them on Twitter, make you jump through an extra hoop to verify that you're a real person and not just a spammer. Especially when you get to a level where I think Curry has 11, or 12,000 people that follow her and maybe 6000 that she follows back. And that's just a lot of people to manage. When you start to get into hundreds of thousands, there's a told another level of managing. But you know, tens of thousands of people is a lot to manage if they're all active on Twitter. So if they're not really people and their cluttering up your your Twitter feed with spam, it can really complicate things. Did you figure what that was through? Twit right through to it. Thank you so true twits. And I think it's tr you tr ue e t w I t dot com will allow you to put um, I see some people do this on their home phones now, too, that you called from his home phone and it says we're not connecting you to a human verification service. Once you prove you're a real person will let you through and ring the number of the person. If you've ever gotten those auto dialers, you know why? That's a good idea. So this is sort of the same idea. You follow somebody and it says, OK, I just want to know you're not a Spam bought. Everybody understand how bots work like this idea that there they sort of in animate objects out there, programs that run around the Internet trying to break into things. That's why we have things like captures, captures air those fields at the bottom, you fill out a form, and at the end it says Now you type in these weird letters that are all distorted in this picture. That's all about proving that you're a human. And that's sort of what true tweet is about as well. It's about trying to block all those not human things on the Internet that are used usually by nefarious people to try and have more followers or more audience than then Maybe they really warrant. So yeah, two twits. A good one. Okay, so how can you verify that somebody is who they say they are online? Well, one of the things that I found can be helpful. It doesn't always work. Is it sort of searching for their name and social media sites? You can search for their email address. If you actually have an email address, sometimes that will help you narrow down. More specifically, this is really the Jessica drink that I want to connect with. Um, and there are a few Genene Mourners in the world if you search for me. I did some research a couple of years ago, and I think there were like 18 Janine Warner's in the US It's not a lot, but there are a few others out there, and some people have names that are very popular. And there thousands of people with that name and some people have names with people who are very high profile that make it hard to find yourself. So using an email address can be a helpful way to narrow down and make sure you're finding the right person. When you get followed by somebody or a friend. Request from somebody and you're looking at their profile to try and see. I don't know this person, but is this person legit? One of the things you can do is look over their list of friends. Do we have any friends in common? And who are those friends we have in common of those really people I know and trust, or those people that are also suspect in that might be sort of building again? It depends on the numbers of people you're talking about. Some of us are getting to enough followers and enough friends on Facebook that it's hard to manage them all on a personal basis. So checking their list of friends, making sure that it kind of fits who they are and looks legitimate can be a good way to verify another quick, easy way to spot fake profiles. And this is the first thing I do when I suspect a profile is go look at the photos and you'd be surprised. But you get a friend request you can. You can always accept the friend request and then unfriend them right away because you can't really get all the way into people's profiles till you accept it. So if you look at it and say OK, this person looks legit enough, let me see, accept it, then go look at their profile. Click on the photos link and see how many pictures they have and what their pictures off. I have an example that I don't have permission to use here, but it's an actress and Argentina, and you search for her. And there are many, many, many people who pretend to be her, and many of them have a beautiful photo of her in the profile because their photos of her all over the Internet, they're very easy to find. But if you dig down deep into the photo section of any one of those profiles, you'll often find kind of random images that aren't even her there, like a shoe and a box and who knows what that is? If you know anything about actresses, you know that they post a lot of photos of themselves. They have a lot of photos of themselves. So if you go to the photo section for somebody who you know has got a lot of pictures of themselves and there are no pictures of them, that's a really good reason to be suspect. One of the things and I know Roberto would back me up on this. Roberto has a whole Roberta Russo was my calling guest from Mexico today has a whole section, a video on YouTube about spotting fake profiles. One of the things he talks about is how many of those fake requests come from very attractive young women. So if you get a lot of requests from attractive young women that you don't know, those tend to be among the most suspicious. Once doesn't mean there weren't beautiful women on social media that you should friend just be extra suspicious of those. Most of the fake profiles used female photos because it looks less likely to be threatened. Another tip. If you're trying to find the actual social media sites of celebrities, politicians, anybody who's very high profile, sometimes reversing the way you get there is a good way. If you go to Facebook and search for the average celebrity, you'll find lots of fake profiles. If you first search Google, find their official Web site, then follow the link from their website to Facebook. You'll often find their legitimate profile and so just thinking in reverse. If you want to follow your favorite football players on Twitter or you want to follow your favorite basketball players, you might start not on Twitter and find your way to a link on Twitter to make sure you're really getting that. There are a lot of athletes who have been spoofed over time and whose profiles have been faked over time, compare profiles on multiple social sites. So another thing I was talking about and there's a there two reasons why I'm sharing this right now. One of them is to make you more savvy as your friend people, but the other one is to think about. These are the things many of us have come toe look for, and if you inadvertently look like a fake profile, you may miss a connection. So part of what I talk about creating a consistent look and feel across your social sites. Part of why it's so important to make sure you keep a nice, clean, reputable, strong reputation online is because there are lots of people out there who aren't legitimate, and you may be mistaken for one of those if you do something that triggers those, so looking at different profiles on different sites is a good way to verify. Oh, yeah, this is really her. I can see she's active in all these places, and that's consistent. And that's the same photo. And this must be the right profile. Another thing to think about. And this is something I teach journalists a lot when they're looking at Twitter to just sports stars. It's another place you've seen this there been a couple articles written over the years by sports reporters quoting athletes on Twitter who turned out not to really be the athletes on Twitter. And in many of those cases, if they had just been a little more thoughtful about looking at what the person was posting, what language they used. So maybe it's, Ah, soccer player for whom English is not the first language. And if you knew them very well and you followed their posts regularly, you see that English wasn't their first language from the way they post. But all of a sudden, there's this profile with their name. It's perfect English every time and, you know, maybe local phrasing more common in Southern California than Spain. You might start to suspect that that's probably a fake profile. So that's another good indicator, really quick indication of spammers is there posting the same thing over and over if you accept a friend request are you connect with somebody on Twitter and all of a sudden they're sending the same thing over and over just on friend. Um, just disconnect. It's really okay. They don't get notified that you did that. They just stopped having access to you. Similarly, when people post strange things on my wall or I just blocked them or unfriend them, um, if they linked odd websites almost definitely a spammer. If something's posting stuff on your wall and linking to a Viagra site, yeah, that's probably not what you Some of this seems obvious, but I found that just having this checklist available really helps people cut through some of that cutter. I just want to kind of reiterate, I think today your online reputation is at least as important as having a good credit score or a well edited resume. When you're out in the world trying to present yourself trying to sell your services, trying to offer what you dio, you want to make sure that your social media sites your Web presence, the way you introduce yourself on the Internet reflects the level of professionalism that you would have anywhere else in the real world, and it's probably even more important in some ways. And the other thing I'll say is you can't build a good reputation overnight, but you can definitely destroy one pretty quickly. So be thoughtful about how your post and what you post. This is a long term game. This is a lifelong skill today, building a good social, media proven presence. Building a good online reputation is a lifelong skill, in my opinion. I think the thing I keep coming back to when people ask me an awful lot of questions is Be honest, be accurate, be consistent and keep your profiles up to date. If you could do that, you're way ahead of the game in terms of just having a clean, strong reputation of mine. That's the answer to an awful lot of the questions that I get from people. I wanted to come back a little bit to the tips I was giving earlier about writing your biography. Another thing that I've learned that can be helpful is, uh, toe right, a first draft on pen and paper, even if you're used Teoh writing everything on the computer. You know, sometimes when you're trying to write that biography and you're tryingto get your Twitter profile to 160 characters. They're trying to say something about yourself and you're afraid you're saying too much or not enough for just stepping away from the computer and sitting in the hammock or sitting on the couch, or even going to a coffee shop and physically writing at my hand, or maybe a manual typewriter. If that's something that puts you in the right space, just breaking out of the routine can be a really good technique for working on your biography. Another technique I found really helpful exercise if you just want an exercise for writing your bio and I'm using this more and more with clients, is to think about writing your biography as if you're someone you know who's about to introduce you at a place where you're going to give a speech and I want you to think of I'm gonna go give a speech about my new product, my new business, my new photo exhibit, or I'm about to give the toast of my brother's wedding if you want. But usually a professional thing works better if you want a professional bio, and I want you to think about somebody who would introduce you in a really positive way. And again, this is about taking that editor out of your own head and letting you put your best face forward. There's a wonderful book. If this is a real challenge for you that's called How to Toot Your Horn without blowing it. I mean, that's the subhead of the book. It's been a while since I read it, but I think that some balls sums up the challenge a lot of us have. How do we promote ourselves without being overly promotional? And there's this real, delicate balance. And if you think about how a trusted friend or colleague might introduce you before you gave a speech at your association dinner, sometimes that can get you into the right headspace to write a biography that works really well on Lincoln on Twitter on other social sites. And the test for me is if you start thinking part way through writing this Wow, this person is describing me in a way that I'm not quite sure I can live up to, but but I kind of like it. You're probably on the right track. Like, that's kind of the feeling you want. Like, Wow, it's the slightly aspirational bio. You know, um, your name is whatever your I trying not to call anybody out specifically, but think about very specifically what you want to be known for and how somebody might lovingly and supportively and complement early. See that, too? Compliment. Really complimentary. Really a word. Yeah, but I was a company literal. Yeah, OK, it's getting late. So my words they're starting toe. Yeah, OK, Twitter bios can only be 160 characters, right? 160 characters. So this is what I came up with. And if anybody wants to play this game with me here, I will try this in real time and see if we can experiment Looking at you. Jessica Debris. I would play this game with you. Shan't tell. It puts you on the spot a little bit, but do you want to try and do a bio? 160 characters. So this is what I came up with for me again. It's not easy, but I have a couple tricks in here that might be helpful to some people. one of the things I used, you know? Web, author of Websites for Dummies plus 25 Books, was about trying to very distinctly say how many books. So plus 25 books lets you know. I've written a lot of books, gets the name of one of them in there, and it uses very few characters. I wanted to get Spanish in there, so I tuck that in at the end. I wanted to brand myself with my domain name where I send most people. And so I used the description of that site to reinforce some of what I dio. I'm not saying this is perfect, but I think there's some techniques in here. Hopefully, um, gets you interested. Journalists turned geek. A lot of people on Twitter are kind of playful in their descriptions. Use something a little unusual. Turn of phrase author trying to build credibility speaker trying to get work or recommendations. Creator of says, This is the company. I run the website. I created a digital design, a training firm, I hope lets you know. I both do design work and teach it all right without me having to say that multiple times and then the last little phrase for my bilingual friends to know they can reach out to me. So there are many great examples in the world of Twitter, and reading other people's Biles on Twitter is a great way to get ideas. But Jessica Drake, what could we say about you? What do you have on Twitter now? It just does photographer and chaotic artist who? That's kind of fun, that's all it says. Yes, you are. You are missing out on so much more, you could say photographer and chaotic artist. Okay, you know, actually, purple's not mad, True or maybe passionate about purple or something like that. If you've got a signature element about yourself, that's not a bad thing to Dio. Uh, is there another, um, audience kind of work? You want some? And I do tutorials and educate, And we'll also be having a Web channel soon. Educator, creator of XX X Web channel. Maybe that was not the right choice of fill in the blank Web Channel way I wrote that Looks like that's not really the message I want to be giving about my new wonderful friend Jessica. Okay, right away, I would say If you start to run short on letters, remember, you can always replace the word and with an amber sign. This is good for just tweeting in general. How do we make things shorter? Um, how do we get extra words out of the way? Um, passionate purple, passionate about purple? That's a little quirky, but it certainly speaks to something that we know about you. If you're not used to using a tool like word, there is, um, away actually write down here the number of words, 13 words, 18 words. We got 100 and 60 characters, so characters with spaces and I believe that Twitter counts spaces as characters, so you have toe include the spaces. So we're up to 98. You could actually probably squeeze somewhere in, although I don't know how long the name your Web channel is gonna be one than my regular website is jail the imagery. But that's also, you know, under my name and on Twitter. So you want to redo it twice? No, I'm going to say that's a really great point. So let's just go to your Twitter profile quick. Um, Jessica Drinker J Jail. The Imagery J lt it found right away cause we knew each other. So if you've already got that you Earl here absolutely no reason to repeat it. Here. I use the URL to jeannine Warner dot com here, which is part of why I repeated the business. You are all there because I wanted to get to you URLs into my profile on Twitter. Um, so that's a good distinction that you might use anything else. Breathe that she should be working in there. Any other client opportunities she's missing. I've heard of someone I know you two know each other well, so I'm picking on you a little bit, but don't don't feel to put on the spot if you were to describe her to somebody What, uh, how would you describe her? I tend to describe the kind of work that she does because it's pretty obvious. I guess that it's, you know, her style. I think the word creative needs. Oh, yeah, you've got chaotic artist, and I was gonna come back to that, but let's let's just put somewhere so another really great thing to do is just start brainstorming. Thank you, Jim. I love creative. Um what other words. Would you brainstorm in there? Fantastical. Who is that working a good wordsmith? Well, yeah, something Something about more. Well, more base the fantasy or you're very fantastical. Even if it's not a word, we could double check that, but im sure theres copy out of her out there online. Who can tell us a fantastical is a word or not. Um, but I think that it's something that shows your fantasy passion, talent, chaotic artist. I can see why you went for that. Um, but I'll tell you, years ago I was I was thinking about what my latest made up title should be, and I was at a poker game with some very creative Hollywood types. You should know we play high stakes poker for nickels and dimes, but, um, so I threw in my Annie and I said, I'm thinking about call myself a digital troublemaker and everybody laughed at the table. But then one of the smartest people in the room kind of turned me and she said, You know, I'm not sure that's really the message you want to convey. There's a negative aspect to that that people might prejudge you for, and by the end of the game would come up with digital alchemist, which I still use to this day because there's sort of an alchemy toe what I do that's very hard to explain to people. That's part design and part journalistic. And so I'm helping people with content as well. The design is Melissa strategy and do a lot of small business consulting as I'm building websites. There's a real alchemy to that, and it would encourage you to think about that. So my reaction, the chaotic it's a little like my friend's reaction. The troublemaker, creator of fantastical realities. Oh, see, I like that. Thank you I thought it might be. But you know, I don't trust my brain at this hour after this amount of. So if we tried photographer and replace can replace creative artists with creator of fantastical realities now we could do photographer and artist, creator of Fantastico realities passionate about pay purple educator and creator off this fabulous new Web channel, you're about to launch email that Teoh like how about we try not to get creator in there twice? You Yeah, very good. Um, founder of launcher of Something like that. Yeah, founders. Pretty solid word. Thanks for copying it in for me there, Jim. Um, I think just watching somebody go through this process can help you. Twitter is the hardest one, cause it's 160 characters. Hey, you know, they could have made it 140 but they gave you an extra 20 characters for your fire. It is, in many ways, the hardest one to do anything else. Thank you very much. Little the site that I'm building where the tutorials will be under photo. Justin's J A S s I I o n it dot com Yes. Okay. Cool, then. Yeah, I think that could work really well. And if you do it right, you can make that a link within their um so it'll stand out a little more and yeah, now you might think about doing what I did instead of calling it a Web channel, which doesn't really tell me what it is you might do something like comma space. Ah, very short description of it that tells me what it is. I know you're still working on that. So that might be pushing it too far to describe that. Yet But let's say you have 123 characters, so you've got you've got a little bit of room left. Teoh elaborate on what that is, and you could potentially, if you got educator into something about photo Justin's, you might be able to take that out. There might be a way to play with that, too, so but I like it. Things for plan. Thank you. So one of the challenges as you build your social media design is to think about how you describe yourself, how you write your bio and how you get consistent and thoughtful about doing that. But going back a little bit to this idea of just managing your online reputation, I really think one of the fastest ways I've seen people destroy the reputations is trying to trash someone else's. If you find yourself feeling critical and you want to say something negative about somebody else, pick up the phone, write a letter you don't send, don't post it on the Web. It's there forever. It looks 10 times worse online than it does just about anywhere else, and I have never seen anybody critique someone else aggressively without making themselves look bad at the same time. There's just almost no way to do it. And that's yeah, But then you get to the other side. What do you do if somebody critiques you? Cause that happens a lot, right? Well, the first thing I say is do not feed the trolls. Never feed the trolls. If someone does criticize you and you do read something online, you put up a post on Facebook and they say something negative or you find something post on somebody else's page about your work about your life, about who you are. My first recommendation is that you take your hands off your computer, sit on them literally for at least a count to because it's really hard to toe fight that impulse to fight back when you see that. And so if you just consciously say Okay, if I ever see something critical about me online, I'm gonna follow Janine's voice. I'm gonna sit on my hands for 10 seconds, and then I'm gonna try and remember. What were those other things she suggested that I do well, one of them is if you really have to set the record straight. If somebody says something about you that you just think it's patently long. Then I would say, instead of responding to them in that discussion area in the comments on their blawg or whatever, go to your Facebook page, go to your vlog and post something positive and corrective, something that corrects the record that sets the record straight but doesn't in a more positive way. So somebody said you were something that you're not. Then you might go to a block host about what you are in a positive, strong way, just to make sure that the good message that you want out there is out there but maybe refrain from responding directly where they are. Another thing I've seen people do is to reach out privately to friends and allies and ask them to come to your defense. Now I mentioned before. Often, if somebody critiques you online, your friends and allies will do that automatically. They'll jump in and post nice things. They'll jump in and say, No, she's great. What are you talking about? Um, but don't be afraid to privately reach out to a couple of people and ask them to do that. If you believe they can do it in a Syria sincere and authentic way. You don't want it to look like you're kind of being spammy with it. You don't want to look like they're sock puppets, but if you need to let your friends know that you need help, that's that's definitely better than getting engaged in a flame or yourself. So remember, those critics can motivate your friends and fans fans, and you may be amazed by just how much support you can get out of that. I don't wanna harp on this issue. I'm going to spend any more time on it. But I have seen people spend lots of time building a great profile in great reputation and starting into a great business online. And somebody says something a little negative, and they respond in the other person over response. And all of a sudden, the main thing that gets attention is this really nasty, ugly online war that they got into. And it can so undermine all the effort you've done to design a good reputation that I just think it's important to keep in mind people do stuff. You don't have to take it so personally, I know it's hard, but your best response generally is a very, very low key one, if it all on the flip side of that, I highly recommend social grooming. And as I said, it kind of comes from this idea of the monkeys watching out for each other. You know that we all kind of have this inherent need to take care of and be taking care of by the people around us. So think about how to shine a light on others. Best sides had a like and share your friend's Facebook post retweet. I still believe that rt a retweet is the highest compliment you can give on Twitter. So take the time to not just post but to be thoughtful and responding. Sometimes I'll kick kick back just to balance my social media, expert experts. My social media experience. At the end of the day, I'm watching the news or something else with my husband. I've got my IPad open on my lap, and I'm just going through Facebook, liking my friends, commenting, doing some social grooming, and it can be kind of a pleasant, you know, I don't have to worry about what I'm going to say or what I'm gonna post. This is my time to just sit back and see what they're saying and make sure I'm taking some time toe listen and like and share and friend attracting post testimonials. If you don't have some compliments on Lincoln, that's definitely something that's worth reaching out for. Make sure that people have said things. But if you take the first action, if you're the one who goes and offers to write testimonials for people, then there often likely to reciprocate that or certainly the much more responsive if you come back and ask for that yourself. Ah, if some of you have the same name is other people online? Just some quick tips for that because it's a common common problem to differentiate yourself. I've seen some people consistently use their middle name, a middle initial nickname. You know, your 1st 2 initials. All those things can work. Um, make sure that you do that consistently, so if you're gonna use a variation of your name, use that same variation on all your social media sites. Remember, you can change your name once on Facebook and a couple times on Google every couple of years um, if you're thinking now, Wow, I've got three different names out there, Janine said. It should be more consistent. This is the time to clean that up. It's the time to think about what's the name I want to be branded for. And I want to get known for, um, if you don't have a good variation of your name and your still struggling with other people have a really common name, then you might think about using the name of a book, a brand business name, a specialty, something else you can get no known for. Distinguished yourself as the Purple Photographer or something like that that people can start to new and recognize as you consistently and, um, as you do that if you share a name with lots of other people, one of the ways to stand out is to get a lot of good information out there about yourself. When I search for you and Google, I'm gonna get the results of maybe multiple people with your name. The more positive information about you that is incredible sights has a lot of social media love. The higher it's going to go up in the rankings So if you're trying to improve your general Google search results around her name, getting your name mentioned in social media and linked back to the page you want to match is a good way to help move that up the ranks again. The best thank you is a retweet, and I have to quote my friend Khari again, saying, Don't send me a note thanking me for my retweet retweet, one of my posts in return. Don't thank me for liking your page. Go like something on my page, right? That's how you really share the love in social media. And that's about really all of us working together to build each other's brands more effectively. Some Social Media designed quick review just to kind of bring this back full circle to some of the things we've talked about. Use a consistent design element across your profiles. If you're gonna change that profile photo, use it across all of them. Make sure it's gonna work in a square in a circle and in other shapes. If you want to be able to integrate it into your banners and it doesn't always have to be a profile photo, it could be another design element that you use, um, creative design that fits your personality. We've talked a lot about that. Do you want a professional quirky? Are you building? Ah, blawg reputation as somebody who's really snarky? Are you really serious? Consultant That does analytics for businesses. Are you a very approachable photographer? And you want people to know you Sprinkle pixie dust like my friend Diane of our body. What are the messages that help get your personality into your profile? Make sure using the correct image sizes. I've throwing a bunch of templates into this. If you buy the class, you get all the templates. But there are lots of places to find recommendations for sizes for social sites out there, and trial and error is not the worst way to do it. But make sure you're using the right one because I've seen great photographs look horrible because somebody crossing the only get crop down the middle of your forehead when it really should be higher or it's too small and its pixelated so taking time to just get the images right. Really make a difference. Um, testing. Posting for the best times frequencies the best ways to reach your audience. Another thing. We talked about a lot. Another thing about building your overall online reputation and incorporating those social sharing links. So once you've taken all that time to build out those profiles to get those social media sites set up, make sure people can find them. You can link them from the signature line in your email. You can link them from your website or BLAWG. You can post those things in multiple places, and I'll just end with. I think the best way to build your own audience is to help other people build theirs. And if you think about the best of social media, is this mutually supportive place You want to put that best face forward, you want to start by making a good first impression? Um, you should never judge a book by its cover. But of course we all dio, and that's how we started yesterday morning, thinking about how do we make that best first impression? How do we think a little more about introducing ourselves best across social media and then using that as a tool to build and drive our careers moving forward