InfoFest Kent 2017: Your Digital Footprint and Managing an Appropriate Online Identity, Dr Fragkiskos Filippaios

The UK’s European university

Your Digital Footprint and Managing

an Appropriate Online Identity

Dr Fragkiskos FilippaiosAssociate Dean (Graduate Studies)Faculty of Social Sciences

Outline

• Popularity of online social networks

• Social capital and career success

• Digital Footprint

• Strategies for building the brand

• Effective online social network strategies

Dr Fragkiskos Filippaios

Online social networks are very popular

• LinkedIn dominates the professional social networking

sector with over 400 million registered members

(LinkedIn About Us, 2015)

• Facebook is reportedly one of the top visited websites,

attracting over a billion daily active users world-wide

(Facebook, 2015)

• Twitter rapidly gained worldwide social networking and

microblogging recognition with over 320 million daily

active users (Twitter, 2012)

• The increased popularity of social networking is largely

due to the proliferation of smart/mobile devices and the

intuitive nature of social technologies (Croitoru, Crooks,

Radzikowski, & Stefanidis, 2013; Salehan & Negahban,

2013).


Social Capital and Career Success

• Social capital theory and career success have

been linked by Seibert, Kraimer and Liden

(2001) who connected three competing

theories of social capital:

• Weak tie theory (Granovetter, 1973)

• Structural hole theory (Burt, 1992)

• Social resource theory (Lin, 1999).

• Connections or ties between individuals in a

network help provide the basis for analysis of

social networks.


Online Social Networking – The positive side

• Online social networking seamlessly enables real-life

relationships through information technology (Calabrese

& Borchert, 1996), facilitating the building of new

relationships, maintaining existing ones and exploiting

online social capital to its full extent.

• The idea that social capital, including interpersonal

relationships, assets embedded in relationships and

processes, contribute to career success has surfaced in

multiple studies of social capital theory (Adler & Kwon,

2002; Coleman, 1990; Seibert et al., 2001).

• Research by Lin (1999) shows the contribution of social

capital to career success through priority access to

information on a job opening which an individual can

obtain through connections, or other nodes in a network

can favourably influence a promotion decision.


Online Social Networking – The negative side

• A growing number of publications (e.g. Barnes & Barnes,

2009, Lange 2007, Livingstone 2008, Lewis & West

2009) continuously draw attention to issues of privacy of

individual information available as a result of social

networking use.

• Some researchers (e.g. Weintraub & Kumar, 1997) argue

that technology may be significantly changing boundaries

between 'publicity' and 'privacy’.

• Ryan and Xenos (2011) argue that lonely and unsociable

individuals tend to spend more time on social media and

passively exploit associations and social capital, while

users with higher leadership scores tend to provide more

active social contributions and use the network for self-

promotion.


Online Social Networks and Business

Connections

• Knowledge sharing opportunities through social networks have been

explored by Chow and Chan (2008). It was found that employees

receive satisfaction from content and knowledge sharing in trusted

environment in professional settings.

• Recent studies on human resource competencies show that

organisational requirements for the exploitation of human resource

capital require collative competencies for knowledge dissemination and

sharing in the work place to promote organisational performance

(Lytras & Ordóñez de Pablos, 2008)

• Employers make use of the information on social networks to make

decisions on potential applicants and these do provide a good basis for

future recruitment of employees (Clark & Roberts, 2010; McLaughlin,

2009).

• Companies that use campus based recruitment practices often use

them to explore social behaviour of applicants such as drinking, use of

recreational drugs or sexually explicit behaviour (Roberts & Roach,

2009).


Digital Footprint

Individuals

• The old saying ‘Choose your friends wisely’ cannot be more relevant as in the context of online social networking

• Increasingly, there are warnings that individuals should be careful of their use of networks generally as employers are more and more using information gleaned from social networks to assess future employees (Peluchette& Karl, 2010)

Businesses

• An increasing level of

concern from the

businesses themselves,

regarding legal

challenges and the risks

involved in using social

networks for building

business, leading to

policy developments

(Wilson, 2009)


Typology of Digital Footprint (Benson &

Filippaios, 2014)


Type of UseSocial Business

Matu

reY

oung

Age

Social Links

Builder

Young

Entrepreneur

Mature Friend Business Links

Builder

Implications of online behaviour

• The significance of digital footprint is important

for successful career management,

professional networking and developing

business opportunities online

• To develop strong social presence and

reputation, professionals need to be aware of

the potential of their participation in networking

events, interactions with peers and media

content accumulation


Online identity screening

• The statistics of social media screening by

prospective employers is brutal

• 69% of organisations stated that they rejected

candidates because of their social networking

contents (Reppler.com, 2013)

• Facebook, checked by 76% employers, Twitter

53% and LinkedIn 48% respectively

(Reppler.com, 2013)


Our findings come from…

• A survey of over 600 business school

graduates from AMBA accredited UK

universities

• We are able to identify the level of awareness

and degree of application of professional usage

of online social networks


Strategies

• Building your own online brand through setting

up a LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter profile showing

skills, expertise and media to external visitors

• Follow group discussions to maintain

professional currency

• Become a thought leader, start (and actively

maintain) topical blogs

• Join companies for career planning research


Effective social media strategies


•Check online reputation

•Remove damaging content

•Identify opportunities for building personal brand

•Change online behaviour to reflect your brand aims

• Develop reputation attributes

up to 1 year

• Build positive profile, including accolades

•Join professional networks of your preference and be an active participant

•Develop/Become a thought leader

•Plan/Do/Check your personal brand

1-3 years• Build networks with like minded people

•Identify new opportunities

•Take part and lead events

•Exploit social capital in networks

•Offer mentoring

•Review/maintain online reputation

•Plan for the next career phase/ future

5 years


Thank you

Any Questions?

THE UK’S EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY

www.kent.ac.uk

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InfoFest Kent 2017: Your Digital Footprint and Managing an Appropriate Online Identity, Dr Fragkiskos Filippaios