Use Reputation Management, Even on Social Media Sites
In the 21st century, first impressions come through social media, so reputation management has to begin with how you present yourself in text and through words.
Intern M.G. has been hired full-time! Not by us; by the local newspaper. They said something about never having met such a professional young man. M.G.? Really? The intern? The 20-year-old intern? I had to ask. “How’d you land such a cushy job, MG?” His reply, “Punctuation.”
And with that word, M.G. has revealed one of the most subtle secrets of reputation management in the online world. On TV, Orange is the New Black. But online, Punctuation is the new orange. Or something like that. You see, people form their impression of you in the first few seconds.
In person, your first impression is your clothes and demeanor. But online, on social media sites, in resumes, and in cover letters, your first impression is nonverbal. Punctuation, grammar, and writing skill—for better or worse—are now how we make a first impression.
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Reputation Management Is in the Details
You might think these details don’t matter. After all, everyone texts with spelling and grammar errors. And perhaps if you’re texting someone you know, coming across that way is fine. But if you’re texting, emailing, posting on social media sites, or writing someone you don’t know, your first impression will come from those texts. First impressions and the trappings of success count. That’s how our brains are wired.
Bankers still wear suits. That’s because they realize appearance counts more than substance. Even after taking the global economy and paying themselves tens of billions of dollars in bonuses from the bailout money, we trust them. Why? Because they wear suits, and our brains instantly categorize them as trustworthy. We rush to give them their money. If they had five o’clock shadows, stank slightly of urine, and had visible lice crawling through their hair, we’d run screaming into the arms of our nearest member-owned credit union, to the betterment of both our financial lives and society. But instead they wear suits. Unconscious impressions count.
In the 21st century online world, grammar, capitalization, and punctuation are the suits.
Use Good Grammar
If you don’t know good grammar, learn it. Subscribe to the wonderful grammar podcast Grammar Girl,(who founded the Quick and Dirty Tips network). Listen to it. And then practice. Just knowing good grammar isn’t enough; you have to train yourself to speak it. Make sure you learn the grammar of the people you want to hang around with, so when you speak, their instant, unconscious reaction is “this person is one of us.”
As politically incorrect as it may be to say it, I’m going there: if you want to work in the high-paid, upper-socio-economic professions in America, learn midwestern, white English grammar. People react unconsciously to this stuff, so you need to use the grammar that will trigger their “this is a person worth taking seriously” reaction. This goes for idioms, too. If you’re hanging out with theater people, and you text them “Good luck!” when they’re about to go onstage, you’ve just branded yourself as a theater neophyte.
You might think these details don’t matter, but they do.
Spell and Capitalize Correctly
Learn to use a spell-checker, and spell-check before putting any piece of writing out there in public. When you misspell a word, it’s like putting a giant sign on your forehead that says “I are a sloppy, spell-bad person.” So now you lose grammar points too, because that forehead sign isn’t grammatical.
Punctuation Counts.
Punctuate! Use periods at the end of sentences. Use question marks at the end of questions. Commas are, as we all know, for the pauses that separate clauses. Exclamation points are for emphasis and should be used sparingly! Semicolons are used to separate independent clauses; they’re similar to periods, but they tie the sentences together somewhat more tightly. Punctuation also lends a tempo and rhythm to your writing, which can help reduce the ambiguity that comes with text-only communication.
Capitalization also sends a message that you’re taking care with your thinking. In English, capitalize the first word of each sentence, proper nouns, and titles. Learn the rules for the language you’re writing. In German, for example, all nouns are capitalized.
Write Well Whenever You’re in Public (or Even “Public”)
These are how you make a good impression, so use them any time you’re in public. And by public, I mean when you tweet, in your LinkedIn profile, when you post Facebook status updates, on your resume, in any articles you write and post online, and with any other piece of writing that someone might see. When someone is investigating you for a job, they’ll look in all those places. Even your normal, innocent status updates send unconscious messages, as M.G. is well-aware.
His tweets are capitalized, with proper punctuation. His Facebook status updates, grammatical. His online impression, even socially, is of someone who is extremely competent, especially for a 20-year-old. No matter your aspirations, the first impression you make will speak volumes, whether you want it to or not. More and more, that first impression is through text. So learn the the basics! Soon, maybe you, too, can have multiple bylines, above-the-fold, on the front page of the Boston Globe before you’re even a junior in college. MG??? Bring me my coffee, please, or sweep the floor. Just do something menial. My ego’s on the line here.
I’m Stever Robbins. I help CEOs and high-potential leaders with strategy and life balance. If you want to know more, visit Stever Robbins.
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About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
