I’ve written a number of times about blogs, and how they can help your self-promotion online. But blogs are just one example of your Digital Footprint – traces left by someone’s activity in a digital environment (Wikipedia). When used properly, potential clients can find your services, or learn of your expertise by the data submitted online. But there are a number of reported cases of people losing their jobs over controversial pictures on their MySpace pages, for example.
This hit home recently when I received this e-mail from a JobShuk member:
Hi,
First of all, thank you for your wonderful site.
I have a small suggestion following an angry message I got today from a potential client, telling me that I am a bad translator because I can’t write a proper English sentence.
After a short investigation, it turned out that she had stumbled on my blog profile statement (I haven’t bothered looking at the blog section). The profile was written by the computer automatically by combining my name and the information I had provided in the services section. This was the result:
"My name is Leah Aharoni and I’m a translation and editing – hebrew and all major languages. I do things when I have time, and the rest of the time, I write things here."
May be it’s not such a good idea to create automatic profile statements.
Kind regards,
leah
Leah is 100% correct. The code, a remnant of an old script, often generates a proper and silly, albeit unnecessary description. As for this issue, we’ve modified the code and corrected other users’ descriptions. To personalize this description,visit your Blog Settings.
Let us all take a lesson from this:be careful what you post about other people, be aware that what you write about yourself can be viewed by others, and it’s not arrogant to "Google" yourself every once in a while to see what others might be seeing about you.