I must confess I was dreading this part of our assignment, particularly when I discovered others would be searching my profile and I would have to be more active on social media platforms.

As a middle-aged woman, I have not had much use for social media, other than communicating with friends and family and for research purposes.  I grew up in a different time and value my privacy.  The thought of “sharing” more of myself is quite frightening to me.

Searching for my presence of profiles was not shocking to me.  I was unable to find even a link to my Facebook account due to my privacy settings.  My brand audit buddy had a difficult time finding anything on me as well.  She had mentioned that she found a Linkedin account for “Sandra Allen” who attended JCCC.  However, this is not my account.   Even when entering more search criteria such as my hometown, schools I have attended, etc, I had no relevant results.  This is also unsurprising given my common name.

I currently have a Google + and Pinterest account.   Although my privacy settings are public for Google and Pinterest, there are no images or other profiles to link them to me without knowing my email address associated with them.  I have a whopping 1 follower on Pinterest.

I also have a Facebook account with strict privacy settings and 190 friends.

Although I know I am capable of managing my social media presence more publicly,  I have discovered that if I wish to work in communications, it will be important for me to be searchable to future employers as well as show my ability to manage my own profiles.

My goal this semester will be to complete all the profiles so that they may easily be linked to me.  I plan to open at least one other platform account and work to cultivate that this semester as well.

UPDATE:  While working on my peer review, her name came up under the dean’s list for JCCC.  I realized that I was on the President’s list for 3 semesters and searched with these parameters.  I was able to find the following listing.