source
I’ll admit that I was late to the whole “social media” thing (feel free to imagine me using air quotations), but now that I’m on board, I love it. I like writing on this blog, sending out tweets on Twitter, and finding old friends on Facebook…I’m even finding that LinkedIn is more vibrant that I was led to believe. But as coaches, our reputations are a big part of who we are and why institutions hire us and we’ve got to be careful of what we put out there on the Internet. So let’s ask ourselves a few questions that hopefully will eliminate some mistakes I’ve seen folks make and give you a clear vision of how to use social media to your advantage.
3 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Clicking The “Friend” Button
- Should I friend players, player parents, or former players? It depends on how you use your Facebook page. Are you twenty-two, just out of college, and taking cell phone pictures of yourself smooching random people at a bar? Well, I think you already know the answer to that one! But if you’re using your page for networking and can keep it professional, then friend away. I think it can be a great way to connect and reconnect with former players and colleagues. If necessary, you can always create a Fan page for yourself that can be used as your professional entity while keeping your personal page for real friends and not “friends”.
- What’s kosher for my Facebook page? You probably already know the general stuff that shouldn’t go on your page, so I won’t go into that. But what about your friends? Are they knuckleheads? You think you’ve got it all together, you’re not putting anything inappropriate on your page, you’re friending other folks in your profession…you’re doing it up! But do you need to set your privacy settings so that the pics your friends have of you acting a fool don’t end up going out to all of your FB friends? I learned that lesson after my family started putting up all sorts personal pictures from way back in the day. They weren’t inappropriate or anything, but not exactly what I wanted my “Coach Dawn” Facebook page to reflect.
- You know it doesn’t go away, right? Delete isn’t really delete, that’s all I’m saying. What you say in your Facebook status update or that you tweet out every day is saved in some manner that techie people understand and I don’t. You can also try to deny that you wrote whatever awful things you said in the heat of the moment (like this soccer coach did), but no one will believe you…especially if they’ve printed out the pages and handed them to your boss like the parents in the previously mentioned soccer coach story did.
Hopefully this can serve as a guiding post for you in your future social media ventures. Good luck and be smart!
