All the articles suggested first googling yourself to see what your presence is like on the internet. When I googled myself however I did not find any links to any of my social media profiles, nor did I find any images of me. The only results that came up were of a horror movie director with the same name as me. Knowing this, I realized my settings for my social media accounts were previously privatized years ago when I first made my accounts. People can still find me if they search my name on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but I remembered that in my settings I tried to keep it to where only friends of friends or mutual followers could view my profile.

When I was younger I was always cautious and more private about my social media accounts because I was warned and wary about the dangers of internet stalking and strangers. As I grew up however I realized I could provide a little more information in my bio and let people find me more easily because social media was becoming the main way  for connecting and communicating with others.

The only social media account that I really audited most recently is my Facebook. For me, Facebook is where I mostly keep in touch with relatives and old teachers. Because of that, I already am aware and cautious with my posts; I only keep my Facebook friends updated on milestones and important life events going on, or I’ll share the occasional Tasty video. Knowing that potential employers would most likely view my Facebook, I went through my tagged photos and hid/untagged myself from pictures that I did not want showing up on my profile. My settings are already set to where I have to approve of certain posts showing up on my timeline just because I like to keep my profile clean.

I don’t think I have a “personal brand,” and I don’t think I need one. There isn’t anything particularly surprising or provocative about my social media; it just represents who I am. My Twitter is full of dumb thoughts that fit into 140 characters, my Instagram is just pictures with friends at fun events, and my Facebook is old, embarrassing middle school photos with new, current college updates. I don’t try to keep up an aesthetic or an aura because it’s just social media. I am cautious of what I post because I know posts are forever and it could give a bad impression with potential future employers, but social media presence as a non-celebrity or college student shouldn’t be a big deal. Whatever I post I know for a fact someone has only looked at it for maybe 5 seconds before scrolling onto the next exciting thing on the screen. People’s presence on social media is mostly fleeting.

I’ve actually googled myself before, mostly because I was bored in one of my classes, but I still decided to google myself again to see if anything has changed.  Everything is all pretty much the same.  Prezis are the only things that come up that I have directly posted, everything else is pictures of my swim team and pictures of my grandfather’s church; only one picture of myself comes up, and that’s from my bio on swim team’s website.  There is a website that comes up that lists my entire family tree and all of our addresses and phone numbers (its awful).  I asked my mom about it when I first saw it and apparently my dad’s uncle created it a while ago; no one really knows why and no one is happy about it but no one knows what to do about it.   It’s not up to date, but my family has the same phone number as when it was posted to we occasionally get calls from people looking to get in contact with other family members, and we just act like we have no idea who those people are.  Everything else that shows up are pictures of my swim team and pictures of the staff of my grandfather’s church because my name is in his pastor biography.

I don’t think there are any misconceptions about me that anyone would get from looking at my social media.  I rarely post, and my Instagram is pretty boring, but I definitely don’t put out a false image of myself.  Before this post, I’ve gone through and deleted or untagged myself from several pictures just because i felt like i looked awful in them.  It wasn’t that I thought that the pictures I were in were necessarily inappropriate because I’ve always been really conscious on not taking pictures that could come back to haunt me; they were just really unflattering pictures.  Now if you google me or even look in the pictures I’ve been tagged in, you’ll just know that I’m a swim coach for Dacula Dolphins and that my grandpa is a pastor.

Surprisingly, when I googled myself not one thing popped up involving me. I was really shocked by this because I am active on all sorts of different types of social media, so I thought that at least one thing would pop up involving me. All of my social media accounts are private, so maybe that has something to do with it, but I thought at the very least my private accounts would come up. I even tried googling “Augusta King Atlanta” and “Augusta King Westminster” (because the school I went to is Westminster) and still nothing popped up about me. I was surprised, but I definitely was not upset about it because now I don’t have to worry about what people see when they google me!

On the other hand, I do audit both my Facebook and my Instagram because I want to be in control of what people see of me. All through high school I would untag myself in pictures that weren’t the best representation of me, even sometimes texting my friends to delete the pictures they posted. Pretty much every picture on my account are pictures that I am tagged in because I don’t post pictures, so that makes it especially important that I look at my account regularly so I know what is on my account. When it comes to Instagram, I am in totally control of what pictures show up on my account, so I feel less of a need to really audit my account.

After googling myself, I was not surprised to see what popped up when searching my name. The first thing to show up, was my Facebook account. This is not concerning for me, because my Facebook is completely private, so the only way someone can see what’s on Facebook is by being my friend. The rest of the links that pop up are all related to my time as a golfer. Previous to college, I golfed for seven years competitively, so there are numerous links to articles and videos of me golfing. I think this is fine to have online, because most of these articles and publications are very well-done and reflect me in a great light. Also, I plan on majoring in finance and entering into the business world, where golf can be a major aspect to finding clients and making deals. The fact that someone can find me through a google search and see that I play golf may in the long run help me out.

It is shocking to see how much information is tied to your name online. I previously had no idea that so much content would pop up when googling my name. It now makes a lot of sense to audit your social media accounts so that it is professional not only for your social life but also for prospective business opportunities. I think now after doing this quick search, I will audit my accounts more thoroughly and go through my friends on platforms like Facebook to make sure only the people I truly know have access to my personal information.

I can remember googling my name in the past and getting the same results as I did for this audit. These results consisted mainly of information and pictures of Warren Spahn- one of the greatest baseball pitchers of all time. Also a blogger from Portland, Oregon appears occasionally. Now this can be a good thing and a bad thing. From this audit’s point of view and a  practical standpoint it is probably a negative aspect. It is hard for other people to find me online which could very well translate to the business world and potential employers as well. This is because I do not have a Twitter account nor a LinkedIn Profile. The fact that I am related to Warren Spahn also affects this. The pros consist of me being able to be very unfiltered on social media. I am always private and only accept certain people to be friends or followers which allows for a truer representation of self than most people can portray on social media.

Most other people searching for my name on social media or google would probably be somewhat stumped as to my existence. On Instagram’s search bar someone could find my name if they knew who they were looking for exactly. Same goes for Facebook. But on other sites such as Snapchat, Bleacher Report, and Google + this is not the case. I keep these accounts under various usernames to prevent others from seeing my thoughts on these personal forms of social media. If I cared for others to see or hear all of my thoughts I would just tell them directly. I personally do not see the point in allowing anyone with unrestricted access to view your own social media accounts and posts without your knowing. As far as employers go, I will be creating a LinkedIn profile as well as some other future social media accounts to brand myself to the business world. At this point in time I do not feel the need to do this. I would say my lack of social media existence when searching my name is very representative of my social media brand. I am relatively disengaged from this realm, but for those who search hard enough and are close enough to me, I allow them to interact with my social media accounts.  There are no real changes that I wish to implement into my social media accounts except the introduction of a LinkedIn profile and potentially more diversity in my Instagram postings.

I do believe that everyone has a “personal brand” in terms social media, but it is not as important or accurate as the authors of these articles makes it seem to be. First of all, anyone can say whatever they want about themselves or others on social media, and the only thing we have as consumers to judge the truthfulness of said social media, is based upon our own knowledge or the  popularity of the account or post. This leaves a large amount of uncertainty when it comes to dependability in social media. A smart social media user will be very cautious when viewing the content produced for social media because they never know what they can and cannot believe. For me, my “personal brand” is one of a male college student who likes to be adventurous and have fun, but doesn’t care to electronically let others know about my experiences. This brand is very vague and can be applied to thousands of other people. This is another reason why I disagree with the importance of working on your “personal brand”; because each brand is not unique. The large emphasis on a personal brand that is so doctored and general seems to be counter-intuitive to the overall goal of social media itself; express ones self and connect with others online for various reasons.  The whole idea is not weird, but rather very exaggerated on importance.

When I google my name the first three things that come up are my Youtube account, which has all my science projects from highschool on it, my Instagram account, and my twitter account. My Instagram account is private so anyone that opens this page will not be able to see my pictures unless I have accepted their follow request. My twitter account, which would be deleted if I could remember my password, is also private and has not been posted on in about three years. I am not very present on the social medias that I have. I am usually the type of person that will open Facebook or Instagram and scroll through for about a minute and then leave without posting anything.

I used to regularly go through and delete all of my old posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Looking back, this was a good and a bad thing. It was a good thing because all of those embarrassing posts from fifth grade are now gone and cannot be brought back to haunt me. But, this is also a bad thing because I deleted many of the pictures that I had from when I was younger on my Facebook and now these pictures cannot be retrieved again. At the time, I had deleted this posts because I thought they were weird and embarrassing, but sometimes I wish that I had kept them. Many times some of my best friends will social media stalk themselves and find old pictures and posts from many years ago that are embarrassing, but these posts will make them laugh and remember and make fun of their younger self. While I did save myself from the embarrassment of having these old posts resurface, I also lost the chance to relive some of my old memories.

After reading the articles about social media auditing, I decided to take their advice and google myself. Besides finding many pictures of an actress with the same name, I didn’t come across any of my social media accounts or pictures of me when I googled my name. Pictures of me or links to my accounts are probably less accessible since I’ve never had a Facebook account and my last name is often assumed to be a misspelling of the word “fairly”. During my application process for college and jobs, I put both my Twitter and Instagram profiles on private in order to make sure that my accounts did not hurt my chances. Even though I don’t post anything bad on social media, I wanted to take these extra precautions.

After this application process, I took my social media off of private, since I don’t really mind who else (besides colleges or companies) sees what I post on the internet. If someone was to look at my account, I would come across as a friendly person (at least I hope). I mainly only post pictures of me and my good friends on Instagram, since I value pictures with meaningful people in them. I use Instagram to look back on memories, and pictures with others always hold more meaning to me than a picture of a flower or a mountain. I don’t try to put too much thought into what I post, or try to have a certain “aesthetic” to my account, because I feel as if this takes away from this memorable aspect of Instagram.

After reading the three articles about social media branding, I felt like a social media loser because I basically don’t do anything that they were saying. I don’t “Google” myself, I don’t care enough to delete my ugly middle school Facebook pictures, and I’m pretty sure I have a different user name for all of my social media accounts. The main reason I’m so behind in my social media branding is because I don’t really look at my social media as a brand. Do I want people to get a good impression of me from my social media? Sure, but that doesn’t mean I sit there and obsess over the way it looks. There’s nothing wrong with that because the first article was right about our online voices weighing heavily these days, but I look at social media as a fun platform to share cool pictures and funny posts with people. I don’t have a huge social media following, so it isn’t really necessary for me to try and brand myself. I also don’t post frequently enough for my posts to be anything more than just a snapshot of a fun experience I had at some random time.  I’m still cautious of what I put on social media because I’ve learned the hard way (aka middle school pictures on Facebook) that what you put on social media never really goes away, but I don’t really look so deep into social media as to try and have a personal brand. I honestly wouldn’t know where to begin and am too lazy for that 🙂

Each article presented strategies to audit your personal brand, some in the same way but some had different strategies. I thought it was very interesting that they all said go type your name in Google and see what pops up. I did that and the first three things that popped up were my Facebook page, my Vine account, and a Prezi presentation that I once created in high school. I then clicked on images and none of the images were of me, they were all of Simone Biles, the U.S. Olympic Gymnast.

Referring to the article, “A Painless Way to Do a Personal Social Media Audit,” the author asked “Do you collect social media and networking accounts?” I had to stop and think because there are some accounts that I have that I haven’t used in a very long time. They are just sitting around and nothing is happening on them because I don’t use them. Going back to the Google search and my Vine account popping up, I can’t tell you the last time I got on Vine which means I could probably delete it. I guess Twitter could be one that I don’t keep up with either because I rarely get on it. On Twitter there is just too much going on and people are always tweeting so I’m never up to date. Skype is something else I have an account for and haven’t used it in years, don’t even think I know my account information anymore. Pinterest, I don’t usually get on it unless I’m really bored or need like a cute idea for something.

I’m very careful with what I post on social media. I know that there’s someone always watching the account or looking at it. I don’t want people to think differently of me because of what I post on social media so I don’t give them a reason to. The impressions someone would get about me from my social media account would be that, I love kids, have a passion to serve and go on mission trips, love my family, and love the Georgia Bulldogs. I don’t have anything to hide on my social media accounts. I don’t think I need to make changes but I could possibly delete my Vine account because I will most likely never use it again. I would say my social media is accurate about my life.