JANET'S BLOG: Examining My Social Networks Reputation by Using Reppler

I have not recognized the importance of building my impression and reputation as a scholar on social media after I started the IST doctoral program. I have used Facebook as my social networking tool the most often. Before coming to IU, the main purposes of using Facebook were sharing music videos, communicating with my friends from different places through messages, and sharing my pictures when I traveled, etc. Nothing was really serious on my Facebook. However, after I started working in the Teaching Technology Lab (TTL) in my first doctoral year, I learned about the importance of building my own digital identity and my own reputation and image in the digital world. Although I still share some things about my personal life with my friends and families in Taiwan on Facebook, I started post something educational on my Facebook as well. Basically, I've tried to continuously share educational news and resources as well as join professional groups on my Facebook. So far, I feel very comfortable to use my Facebook as a tool to market myself and get educational/professional information from those groups I involve in. However, I still sometimes struggle with how much/what kinds of personal life information I should or shouldn't post on Facebook so that I won't destroy my professional reputation online. I think I will have a clearer understanding about this after attending Dr. George Veletsianos' presentation on digital scholarship.

The following two images are screenshots of my social networking reputation/impression score and results by using the social media monitoring service - Reppler.

This is a screenshot of my Reppler score.

This is a screenshot of my social network impression analysis from Reppler.

When I google myself on the Google Search Engine, fortunately, all the results showed up on the first page were all about me from my LinkedIn, Google+, Blogger accounts, as well as my service positions in the IST Conference and the GIST. I guess it is because I have a pretty unique name and I used my name and email information consistently for most of my social media accounts, so the search results showed up with consistent information of what I have been using and doing recently.

At first, I created my LinkedIn account before I graduated from UPenn and tried to look for a job or an internship in the U.S. The Career Service Center at Penn strongly recommended me to use LinkedIn to build my professional portfolio online. Eventually, I found it is a really powerful tool to build and expand my professional networks. I found many scholars update their LinkedIn accounts more frequently than their information on their own websites. Having up-to-date positive information in people's profession is one of the vital elements to maintain their online reputation and impression. I feel that it would be a lot easier and better for me to completely devote in two or three specific online platforms to build my own digital scholarship with good reputation than to have lots of different platforms with incomplete or outdated information online. So, I think I will definitely keep using LinkedIn and Facebook as main tools to maintain or improve my professional image online.