Sarah Fudin currently works in community relations for the University of Southern California’s Master of Arts in Teaching program, which provides aspiring teachers the opportunity to earn a MAT degree and teacher certification online.  Outside of work Sarah enjoys running, reading and Pinkberry frozen yogurt.

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Word-of-mouth used to be the primary way that a business’s or individual’s reputation could be enhanced or damaged. But with the growth of social media, like Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and Twitter, almost anyone has the power to affect the reputation of even the largest companies.

A recent case in point was Bank Transfer Day, which began on September 29, 2011 with Bank of America’s announcement of a new $5 monthly debit-card fee. This prompted Kristen Christian, a 27-year-old art gallery owner from Los Angeles, to log on to Facebook and share an idea with friends: Let’s all withdraw our money from big banks and open new accounts with credit unions and smaller community banks. She even suggested a date: November 5. Next she created a Facebook event page for Bank Transfer Day. Within a month more than 80,000 people had RSVPd.

According to The Christian Science Monitor, approximately $4.5 billion was transferred from big banks to smaller institutions on or before Bank Transfer Day. This amount may be just a drop in the bucket compared to the total assets of the nation’s largest banks, but as a symbolic protest, the impact of Bank Transfer Day was immeasurable. Bank of America has dropped all plans to charge customers for using their debit cards and other banks, like Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, have followed suit.

Netflix is another company that recently paid the price for ignoring the power of social media. The company announced its decision to form a new entity called Qwikster, effectively splitting the business in two. Customers would have to join both Netflix and Qwikster and pay nearly double in fees for the same services they were already receiving from Netflix alone. Unfortunately, Netflix seemed to have underestimated the impact of this change on customers as well as neglected to trademark the name Qwikster or check on who owned the Twitter handle. It turns a college student named Jason Castillo already was Tweeting under the name Qwikster and refused to give up the moniker.

Netflix was soon dealing with customer uproar over an increase in fees as well as lack of control over the name Qwikster. Within a few weeks, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced in a blog post that plans for Qwikster had been scrapped. The Huffington Post reports that more than 27,000 people commented on Hasting’s post, leaving disgruntled responses like, “Splitting Netflix in two so that you have Netflix and Qwikster is the worst business decision since New Coke.”

What can members of Generation Y take away from these examples? Simply that social media can be a power for either good or evil when it comes to reputation. When using social media channels, companies need to focus on creating two-way conversations with their customers. Using it as an avenue for electronic press release to announce changes that customers will perceive as negative introduces the risk of a very public backlash. In the future, the social media winners will be companies that maximize the opportunity for opening up a dialogue with customers before making controversial changes. Read more suggestions about the effective use of social media in business on SocialMediaToday.com.

On a personal level, social media can incredibly useful for building networks of friends and professional contacts, but when misused it can damage a reputation in ways that are hard to undo. College admissions offices and employers have started to research candidates by performing Google searches and visiting sites like Facebook and MySpace. Reputation.com, a leading online reputation management company, states that 70 percent of people responsible for hiring in the U.S. have rejected a candidate due to something found online. Guarding your online reputation and keeping  your online image clean can make all the difference in the world when it comes to getting into the college of your choice or landing your dream job.

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Alban is a contributing writer at Home Loan Finder, a home loan rates comparison website. Alban is passionate about social media and their opportunities.

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Believing in yourself is one of the most important lessons you will ever learn in life, because you have to bewilling to bet on yourself, even when no one else will. However, there is a big difference in believing in yourstrength, your abilities and your determination, as compared to believing you are the person you portray yourself as on social media.

If you really were the person you appear to be on Facebook for example, you’d never sleep – with thousands offriends, hundreds of causes to like and events to attend; how could you? Luckily Facebook isn’t real life, andthere is down time, unfortunately no one wants to hear about that, so you don’t tell them.

What Happens on Facebook

There is no doubt that high school friends and long lost lovers have been able to reconnect over the internet andsocial media. However, there cases are the exception, not the rule and most of the interaction you will see onFacebook will be superficial and insincere. Before you stop reading, consider that this post isn’t to denounce theuse of Facebook, but to help you see it for what it really is, rather than being lulled into the belief that it is real,that all 948 of your Facebook friends will be at your side in an emergency, and that life really is all about thesnapshots and 140 or 420 character summaries you send out to the world. Continue Reading »

The eBranding Me team is proud to publish an original series: PBYP – Pause Before You Post. Every Monday morning our post features 5 “Social Media Over-Shares”. We have all made the mistake of pressing Post too soon and publishing content that was inappropriate or not complete. While these mistakes happen, a simple mouse-click can make a remarkable dent in one’s personal brand.

You can find all of the posts, organized for your convenience, here. Subscribe via email and/or RSS.

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It should come as no surprise to you, eBranding Me blog readers, that innovative new communication technology allows for a constant connection between the on and off-line world. As this Virgin Mobile Android commercial shows, some people take it too far. So remember, “Pause Before You Post”!

eBranding Me visitors can make submissions by simply emailing Info@eBranding.Me with the Subject “PBYP” or tweeting with the Hashtag “#PBYP”.

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College admission should not be the ultimate goal of education reform.

The Opportunities Project and eBranding Me announce Solutions for Change in Education, a series of white papers that reveal the shortcomings of higher education’s lack of focus on career development initiatives and highlight potential solutions.

Download the first paper TODAY!

In 2011, new college graduates are facing multiple obstacles in their efforts to launch their first careers, including record student loan debt, prolonged unemployment, and growing employer dissatisfaction with their abilities. Because of expanded job searches coupled with large loan payments, most new graduates will not break even on their investment in their bachelor’s degree more than a decade after they graduate.

In “The Economic Achievement Gap: No End in Sight,” the first white paper in this series, authors Tracy Brisson, Keith Petri and Justin Mathews summarize alarming economic data that illustrates the true scope of the problems our students face in today’s economy and pose questions about whether college career centers can play a role in improving economic outcomes for new graduates. Continue Reading »

The current job market is very poor. Career Coaches and industry experts have been throwing around statistics stating there are anywhere from 5-8 qualified individuals applying for each open position. The last thing a job seeker needs is a social media blunder to ruin his chance of securing employment.

eBranding Me released its Reputation Index as a fun, and social, tool to determine how compelling an individual’s social media presence is. The results of a query returned three results:

1. Enrollability: College admissions staff likes to see evidence of initiative, passion, and drive in pursuing your goals. Our algorithm works hard to find initiative and positive thinking in your online presence, since we know how big a difference those make to your college admission chances!
2. Hireability: Because employers value initiative, positive thinking, and hard work, that’s exactly what we track. eBranding Me’s algorithm automatically determines positive (and negative) sentiment, popularity, and passion. We try and figure out if a lot of people are impressed (or not!) with what you’ve accomplished online, and weight that by how frequently people talk about you. The more passionate people you have talking about you, the higher your score!
3. Dateability: We know the first thing some people do these days is Google (or Facebook) the name of their prospective amour. We have tried to simplify that search into our Dateability score, which tracks whether or not a person has a good reputation and a loyal group of friends. We figure that people who have those attributes will be better to date – so the higher your score, the more attractive your online reputation!

However, the team over at MyWebCareer has built a tool that has practical applications and actually reads your personal Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles to determine Your Career Score! With research showing a staggering 83% of recruiters turning to social media websites and online search engines to research job candidates in 2011, it is more important than ever to control the information published about you online!

“Your Career Score provides insight into how colleagues and employers perceive and evaluate your professional competencies and achievements. It is refreshed each month, and you are notified of any changes and actions you should take to maintain a strong and positive career brand.” Continue Reading »