We all remember Justine Sacco’s poorly thought-out tweet about her trip to Africa, right? Perfect example of what NOT to tweet.
With the internet literally right at our fingertips, it’s never been easier to learn about someone through their social media accounts. Twitter is a popular platform and a favorite of many (including me), yet this social network has blurred the lines between personal and professionalism. Learning how to balance the two is a challenge. You don’t want to post a negative comment that may impact your future career (ahem Ms. Sacco); however, you also want to avoid only talking business matters and not having a human voice behind your account.
Below are some do’s and don’ts on how to master balancing personal and professional life on Twitter:
Connecting with professionals
- Do: Thank them for an informative article or blog post they wrote. “Thanks (name) for the great tips you listed in (name of article)!”
- Don’t: Annoy them with questions every day. DM or email them with any specific questions you may have.
Spring break
If this story could have a theme song, my vote would go towards Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” because it best describes this entire situation.
*cues music*
"It’s like a PR vet tweeting something racist….and isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?" LOL!
Meet Miss Justine Sacco, director of corporate communications at InterActiveCorp (or IAC, which is a company that owns Ask.com, OkayCupid, Match.com, and many other sites) tweeted something very unfortunate to her followers on Friday.
Now, through 3 months of job searching, I know that one needs at least 7-10+ years of experience in order to have a senior position in a company. I also know that social media is still kind of new, but what I seriously CAN NOT understand is why she:
A) Was using that account as a personal account.
B) Thought being white made her exempt from getting AIDS.
C) Hadn’t been caught sooner for her other questionable tweets.
I could be wrong but I don’t think Twitter is a place a senior PR pro working for a company should have a personal PUBLIC account. Because Justine didn’t find her tweet offensive enough to delete, by the time she was on her flight to South Africa the world was in an uproar on Twitter.
It’s like I was watching the Truman Show. but this incident was a real version of that movie— just knowing that a person’s life has changed except for them was really unbelievable.
IAC, of course, was not here for any of what Justine said and issued a statement saying they would “handle the issue appropriately.”
So while the world waited, #HasJustineLandedYet was born. GlobalGrind put together some of the best of those tweets, and a few of my favs are below.
- Use hashtags- using hashtags effectively allows anyone on or off Twitter to easily search posts that are relevant to them. Hashtags also allows your followers to know exactly what your tweet is about. #BreasPRTip, #SeeWhatIDidThere
- Stay current- Being up to date with current events allows you to utilize all aspects of Twitter, especially if a current issue has made a Trending Topic and your followers are interesting in learning more about it.
- Get involved in Twitter Chats- Taking advantage of Twitter chats allows you to interact with other people in your industry and could be a great way to network with people across the country.
- "Humanize" your brand/comany- To make your account more personal and less “robot-like” you could share small pieces of information about a new release of a product as well as interacting with followers by replying to questions they may have of your company.
- Make sure links to webpages are active- There’s nothing worse than clicking on a link via any social media site, just to be directed to that horrid ‘404 link inactive page’. Okay, there may be worse things than this but it makes you feel cheated in a way.
