Think Before you Post

On Monday, March 5 the Social Marketing Team at Frostburg State University sponsored the event, “Think Before You Post.”  That evening, over 60 students gathered in the Lane University Center to learn about the positive and negative effects of social networking, and what they should think about before posting pictures and statuses.

The presenters from FSU’s Social Marketing Team discussed many issues regarding people posting statuses and pictures on social networks, and how some of the things they post can later affect them when trying to apply for a job.

The four presenters for the event that night were: Briana Watson, and Carolyn Maxim, Ly-Anh McCoy, and Carissa Warnick. Watson began the presentation by discussing all the positive outcomes of social networks. Some of the reasons she named were that it is the fastest way to get news around, it is quick and easy for people to get to know someone, and it is easy to view all upcoming events. Throughout the first couple of slides Watson showed the audience screen snapshots of how Frostburg State University uses their Facebook page for awareness of events and CNN's twitter page to show news updates.

Watson explained the negative side effects of social media, and how it can harm people's friendships and relationships with one another. The looks on the audience faces suddenly started to change from all smiles to frowns.

Maxim stepped forward and started taking over the presentation by explaining how social media can harm people's career. She showed statuses of people saying how much they hate their job and manager, and also provocative pictures that could cost them their job.

Pictures with females with barely having any clothes on lying out on the ground holding bottles of alcohol were pictures that were coming up across the screen.

Members of the audience began to whisper to each other about how that is “definitely not attractive.”

Watson, Marketing Coordinator for SpotlightOnline,  explained," Businesses are looking at potential employees social sites like their Facebook page, and many college students don't understand that their Facebook page could cost them a job.”

I started to show pictures of people's Twitter accounts of them rolling weed in school, smoking weed, and showing large sums of money with weed next to it.

I, Marketing Coordinator for Twitter, pointed to the picture of the weed and money and stated, "Now we all know what this picture is clearly trying to promote to others, and future employers aren't going to want to hire someone like that when clearly you're stating your making money  by selling drugs so why would they need to hire you.”

After all the negative things about why people shouldn't post bad pictures and statuses, the presenters started to talk about ways to protect what they post on social networks. Warnick, Writer, started to talk a little about blogs and what people should do to protect their blogs through privacy settings.  

Warnick strongly encouraged people to be really aware of the blogs they post, because most blogs can be read by anyone if they don’t have the right privacy settings activated.

Towards the end of the program Maxim then showed a video called "Take This Lollipop,” to make people aware that there are people who stalk your profiles if you don’t protect your information. The video showed a creepy man that looked like he belonged in a scary movie looking at pictures of a female that are on her Facebook, and pulling up her exact location just by the information provided on her page.

 After looking at the video, many members of the audience looked at one another with worried looks.

"Nothing you post on a social network is ever fully removed offline even if you delete it," stated Maxim, Guerilla Marketing Coordinator.