So you’ve come home from work, you’ve had a bad day, and the first thing you do is go to your computer to vent on Facebook by posting a ranting about your job in your status update. All your friends will understand and give you the sympathy you are looking for and you’ll feel better before you stuff your face with Haagen-Dazs. But what about your boss who’s also on your friends list. Ooops, forgot about that one.

The picture above gives you an idea of just how easily just one bad post can make your bad day turn into a really, really bad day, or worse. So how do we prevent such mishaps and still keep our ability to connect with friends without fear of what we say?

I am reminded of something my grandmother used to tell me. Pretty sound advice too, think before you speak, or in today’s terms, think before you type, tweet, or update your status.

Now if you are one of the few people in the world with out a profile on one of these networks. Now would be the time to start. As I’ve said earlier, the 3 social communities of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIN are the 3 most important ones to use in my opinion. There are also some other great niche communities that may benefit you as well, but we’ll cover that in another article.

So here’s the websites of where to go to get started with your first social profiles, and also a link to my profile on each one, let’s connect so that you will have at least one friend to start with. But don’t worry you’ll find many of your friends are often already on at least one of these networks, if not all 3.

Facebook and my profile on Facebook

LinkedIN and my profile on LinkedIN

Twitter and my profile on Twitter

Now moving on, we need to sanitize our social networks as much as possible. If we are willing to share things on our profiles that may be somewhat questionable, then we need to make sure that everyone is not able to see these things. Let’s focus first on the Privacy Settings in Facebook.

But before we get to that we need to do a couple things first. We need to create a list in Facebook for those who can see or not see certain things. So we will make 2 lists, one list will be for our close friends or family whom we do not care what they see on Facebook. And we will create another list for those whom we want to severely limit what people see. This list would be one you might put your boss on for obvious reasons. We do this because if your boss is on Facebook, he may try to connect with you. It might appear rude if you do not accept a friend request from your boss, so this way you can accept the friend request while still limiting what your boss sees.

Of course, there are occasions where you may be required by your job to have a social network profile, like on Facebook, to be used for marketing purposes for your job. In such scenarios you might really want to consider having two profiles, one for your professional profile, we could call this the public profile, and one more for your personal stuff. If you do this, make sure your personal profile is kept private and only accept friend requests from people you really know.

So let’s create our lists. Log in to Facebook, in the top right corner, click on Account, and then click on Edit Friends. On this page you should now click on the button titled Create New List. This will be the limited profile list so where it says “Enter a Name” title this list Limited. If you have any bosses, supervisors, or other people whom you might want to limit what they see, then go ahead and find them in the friend’s list that should now be visible and select them. After you have selected all your current friends that you would like to have limited access to your profile, go ahead and click Create List.

Now create another list for those who will be able to see everything. Follow the same directions above and title this one Unlimited. You can also go ahead and add those whom you would like on this list too. Of course, you can title these lists what ever you like, just make sure that you remember which list is which. You can also create lists for other purposes, but we will get into that more later on.

Now that we have our first set of lists, let’s adjust the privacy features in Facebook to take advantage of these lists. Again, click on Account in the top right corner, then click on Privacy Settings. Now in the links available click on the Profile Information link. This will open up a page where we can control who sees and does not see specific profile information. You will notice across from each selection is a button that says Only Friends and has an arrow next to it. If you click on the button several options come up. We will use these options to set the information availability.

Also notice that when you click on that button, one of the options is Customize. This is the option you will want to use to block certain people, or lists of people. Now you can of course set your privacy options to what ever you choose. Especially since how you set the privacy will be greatly affected by how you are actually using your profile. However, I am going to assume we are using the profile for both personal and business, and here are some of my recommendations for this scenario:

• About Me – Refers to the About Me description in your profile, odds are you can leave this as Only Friends, dependent of course on the types of stuff you place in the About Me section. Remember rule number 1; don’t post anything that you would not want to see on front page of a newspaper.
• Personal Info – Including Interests, Activities, and Favorites. Same as above, probably safe to leave as Only Friends.
• Birthday – Your Birth date and Year. I highly recommend hiding this from everyone. Your birthday can be used by non-scrupulous people to steal your identity. If you really don’t mind sharing it with friends, then make sure you have created a list of people and select that only people from those list can see it. To do that click on Customize, then in the new little pop-up window, for the selection for These People: make sure to select Specific People, then type in the appropriate list.
• Religious and Political Views – This is kind of tricky one, I would recommend selecting Only Friends because in an ideal world no one would really care about your views or beliefs. However, we do not live in an ideal world, and possible employers may not always agree with your views and beliefs and this could influence a decision. Of course, you may not care what people think and may actually like sharing your view, so this is definitely a personal choice.
• Family and Relationship – Shows Family Members, Relationship Status, Interested In, and Looking For. This one is probably safe to show to Only Friends. As a safety precaution, I would not show this to anyone but friends.
• Education and Work – Shows Schools, Colleges and Workplaces. This is the professional stuff you want to show off. And it may help past friends and colleagues find you. Show to everyone.
• Photos and Videos of Me – Shows Photos and Videos you've been tagged in. Depending on the things you do with your life, odds are that if there is any category that you do not want your boss or future employer to see, this is one of them. So mark this category, with Customize and allow Only Friends to see the photos and you will also want to block the appropriate block list created earlier. You may even want to consider making this category only visible to a certain list as well as an added precaution, but again that depends on the pictures you or your friends (who can tag you, or link the picture to your profile) post.
• Photo Albums – Controls the default of who can view your own photos. The great thing about the photo albums is you can also set each gallery with its own permissions as well. So use this to set a default, you are probably safe to set it as Only Friends.
• Posts by Me – Sets the default setting for Status Updates, Links, Notes, Photos, and Videos you post. Okay here is the category that often gets people in trouble. One mistaken post giving away negative information to your boss or future employer can have detrimental effects. One great example is the picture above in this article with the girl complaining about her boss and then her boss reading that, who of course fires her. However, possibilities are endless, Imagine calling in sick to work and posting how the great the game is. Making a post with some kind of remark that could possibly be taken as sexist, and then the co-worker who already does not like you, shows your boss the post. You get the idea here. A simple slip of the tongue can really have drastic consequences. So mark this category, with Customize and allow Only Friends to see this category and you will also want to block the appropriate block list that was created earlier.
• Allow friends to post on my Wall – Simply sets whether your friends can post stuff on your wall. And you’re probably going to be pretty safe checking this.
• Posts by Friends – This controls who can actually see the posts by your friends on your profile. Now while we are allowing friends to post on our wall, we don’t always want everyone to be able to read what has been posted. Remember, friends can’t always keep secrets very well. So mark this category, with Customize and allow Only Friends to see this category and you will also want to block the appropriate block list that was created earlier.
• Comments on Posts – This one is also probably okay to mark as Friends Only.
• Well that covers the visibility of the profile information. Now look to the top left of the page, and click on Back to Privacy, then click on Contact Information. This is important too; your good friends will probably already have your phone number and your email. So I would highly suggest changing the privacy setting on everything to Only Me and/or select your unlimited list by first selecting Customize. Bottom line, if someone needs any of that information, they can send a message to you and request it. Don’t just put it out there for the taking, its inviting trouble or unwarranted marketing.
• However, if you have a website, you will probably want to set that permission to Everyone. And if you are using this your profile for a lot of business related stuff, then you might want to set all these permissions to Everyone as long as it is business contact info.
• For Add me as a friend, select Everyone, and for Send me a message, select Only Friends, make them add you first, it helps to prevent spam messages. Also, always hide your email address by selecting Only Me through the Customize option.

These are the main privacy concerns on Facebook that could affect you in a professional manner. However, I would definitely recommend flipping through the other options in the privacy section and selecting what you are comfortable with in regards to the Facebook applications.

Well that pretty much covers the Facebook aspect of the privacy concerns. Following these tips will help to sanitize your Facebook profile from any unwanted garbage that may negatively impact you on a professional level. However, nothing is a sure bet, so always your check your profile on a regular basis. For Twitter and LinkedIN it’s really a lot more straightforward so just dive right in and be sure to always stay on top of your social media. Until then, keep networking.

So I decided the best way to understand how to build better for search engines, was to build a search engine. Several weeks later, search engine built, and now the ideas springing forth have led to a Facebook App being developed too.

The possibilities with this one are endless. But for now, I’m keeping this in wraps. This project has some promise for sure. I would love to write more, but well, you’ll just have to stay tuned=)