TMI: Oversharing on social media and its impact on your brand

Since its inception, social media has fostered a “share-society” that would make any pre-school teacher giddy. Having a great meal? Share it. Disappointed with the election? Voice your anger ad nauseam.

We (and I say “we” because we’re all guilty) overshare on social media for a variety of reasons—validation, self-promotion, and grief-processing are just a few of the common motivators. Social media allows us to act as our own publicist in a way that no medium has before, and as such we can post whatever we desire without any apparent immediate consequence.

A key component to leveraging your personal brand via social media is authenticity. Sharing information about who we are, who we know, and how we think outside of the virtual world is part of social media’s appeal. Because let’s face it, we’re all voyeurs. However, there is a tipping point when all of our “authenticity” becomes damaging to our personal brand.

There is no magical equation or data point that I can speak to, but here are a few challenges that oversharing evokes.

You appear unstable and/or untrustworthy. How are potential clients and/or employers able to have confidence in you if you are willing to openly reveal every intimate detail of your life on social media? No one wants to enter into a relationship, professional or otherwise, with someone who does not understand appropriate boundaries.

You threaten your own personal safety. Oversharing your personal information or that of your family and friends puts you (and potentially them) at risk. Stranger danger is very real in the social media universe, so you want to make sure that you are not providing unscrupulous people with data about you that could result in you being harmed physically, emotionally, or financially.

You become just noise.  When we overshare, whether it’s talking about a recent breakup or our disproval with the government, we run the risk of our followers tuning us out—or worse, unfollowing us all together. The key is finding balance between what we want to say and what our followers need us to say.

The good news is that while you can’t take back what you’ve posted previously you can move forward with a revised strategic plan for your personal brand. Get back to basics: remain positive, post information that is engaging, informative, or entertaining, and you will slowly but surely bring yourself back from the brink of the social media exile.