I was originally going to ask you to compare the online media presences of two political campaigns (preferably not our presidential candidates’). But since the election is seeming like a less and less enticing topic, and we have a holiday weekend, I’d like to make this post completely optional.

If you’ve missed several blog posts, you can use this one as a make-up, but otherwise you’re free to take a well-earned break.

If anyone *does* choose to do this, however, please take a look at Roland Barthes’s classic (and short!) 1957 analysis of photographs of French election candidates as one possible model for considering the standard ways in which campaigns present themselves.

I wish I could find a high-quality version of the video, but here it is.

More on Saul Bass’s logos and movie posters…

I have googled myself before, but the last time I remember doing it was probably in middle school. During that time in my life, pre social media, the only articles or pictures that came up were my school website, or the picture of myself receiving the penmanship award that appeared in the paper. Now when I google myself, the first thing that comes up is my facebook page. I personally do not post pictures on facebook. I did not post in middle school and I do not post now, so I am not worried about any embarrassing posts from my past. However, my friends post on facebook and tag me in pictures all of the time. These articles made me more aware of the photos that I am tagged in online. I then went through and deleted some of the pictures I am tagged in that might come of as inappropriate, or embarrassing. My instagram page also came up, but my account setting are private, so the only pictures that I came across when I googled my instagram were pictures from my friends whose accounts are public. This made me realize how important the privacy settings are on different social media accounts. A lot of the accounts that I don’t use that often are also private, so they were difficult to find in the google search as well.

I think it is very important to audit your social media every once in a while. Sometimes we forget that our online brand isn’t all about updating  our followers on partying or how much fun we are having in college, it’s about making a name for yourself in the online community and the work force.

These articles were actually very informative and eye opening. I always knew in the back of my mind how important it was to keep at least a semi-professional presence on media, but this allowed me to see how unprofessional my media truly is.

If someone was looking to hire me, after one simple google search I am sure I would be cut. When you google my name alone, it pulls up a lot of the embarrassing pictures from my youth and a lot of my older accounts that I no longer use – Vine, SoundCloud,  YOUTUBE. My YouTube account alone was so awful. When I was younger I loved to make videos and editing them. This opened my eyes to how I need to take a step in getting my image cleaned up to a better standard.

My other media accounts (Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook) do all represent me in a fairly decent manner. I would say these media platforms represent me fairly well. They do need a little cleaning up, but nothing too major.

As of right now, I don’t think that I have a ‘personal brand’, but I do believe that that is something that I will need to begin to develop over the next few years in order to put myself in a position where an employer would hire me. This is a critical part of a job application that a lot of people fail to consider. People don’t realize that they will look into you to make sure you are who you say you are.

In looking at the websites about auditing  a social media brand, it was very interesting to think about the different methods that each source presented. I was surprised to discover that they all mentioned that you should google yourself initially to see what pops up in considering how you are presented to the world through social media.

However, for me, this initial step is ineffective because my name is very common. When I googled myself, to see if anything would come up, nothing did because there are so many people with the name Emily Olson out there and I don’t have a social media presence that is strong enough where it would override the others that exist out there.

A classmate would get probably think that my social media presence is normal. I’m a “normal and happy” student, friend, family member etc. I find this interesting because this is the image I tend to present, even if it’s not always how I’m currently feeling in the moment. To an employer or a graduate admissions committee, I would probably make a  relatively good impression on them in regards to my social media, but it honestly depends of the specific company or university.

I think really defining how I want to use each form of social media that I currently have an account for (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Pinterest) will definitely help me refocus on what I’m actually getting out of social media. Making these changes will not only allow me to figure out how I want to alter the ways in which I use social media, but will allow me to redefine my presence/usage through improvement overall.

I do think that I as a person have a personal brand, especially when it comes to refining and adjusting an image for a future career. I do present an image that I want to maintain to be “clean” of anything that may prevent someone from hiring me in the future. I think I’ll need to have a “personal brand,” especially in the next couple of years, in order to look into setting up  informational interviews, seeking out internships, and finding out more about other career possibilities.

The articles that we read got me thinking about my social media usage even though I’m not super active on social media. I think the idea of a social media brand is a concept about someone’s perception about a user on different platforms of social media. My social media presence isn’t very active although I do like pictures constantly and sometimes comment on a couple of friend’s posts. I went through the different steps that each of the websites asked you to go through. I ended up changing a couple of things about my social media usage. For example, I googled myself and found pictures of me from 5^th grade which was interesting. None of the things that popped up, one of them being a link to my posts on this sit, bothered me enough to want to delete them. I found a couple of things that showed random movie industries like the Hunger Games whose pages I had liked popped up which I went back and unliked because all of it was from middle school and my freshman year of high school. I also untagged myself from some embarrassing Instagram and facebook pictures because they were just weird and from a while ago.

It was interesting looking through all my old posts and I also made it a point to delete all my posts from my first few years of high school because that was when I used to post weird status updates and cliché quotes. I got rid of any posts that I had shared about anything controversial or political to remain as unbiased as possible on the internet. I read a while ago that many employers and colleges monitor their potential candidates’ social media presence and I didn’t want any posts I had made to affect a potential employer’s perception of me.

I don’t think that I have a “personal brand” but I do think that if someone does come to having it, it should be maintained because it really does showcase a person’s perception to the entire world which can affect a lot of things in that person’s life.

Overall, going through all my social media helped me to refresh through my content and clean it up to make it more presentable. It was also an eye-opener to how my presence on social media has changed since freshman year of high school, four years. I’m glad I had the option to do it because I don’t think I would’ve done it for a long time had I not gone through the articles and even this assignment.

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.