What Do 3 Poor Dogs and Twerking Have in Common?

22
Mar 2018

reputation

What do 3 poor dogs and twerking have in common?

You’ll have your answer in a minute.

First let’s talk about the 3 dogs part of the headline.

Actually, before we do that – let’s rewind to almost a year ago…

Remember this?

According to the Huffington Post, only a few days after that incident, United Airlines’ “market value entered rapid descent, wiping away $250 million”.

If that wasn’t bad enough, as we quickly approach the anniversary of that incident, these three headlines have rocked the company in the past 10 days:

 

First this happened:

protect your reputation

 

Then this happened:

protecting your reputation

 

Finally this happened:

 

Given how much people love animals (in some cases more than humans), you cannot blame them for being outraged and angry.  I don’t even have a dog, but I do love them, so it makes me angry too.

It makes you wonder the type of impact these three incidents will have on United’s market value this time around?

Let’s now turn to the second part of the headline…twerking.

For those of you who don’t know what twerking is, let me enlighten you by providing several definitions from the website that has quickly become millennial’s go-to version of the Cambridge Dictionary…yup, urbandictionary.com:

And for those of you who are more visual, it looks something like this:

Ok, I think you get the idea…

Whether or not Miley Cyrus should be twerking or not is really something that we could debate all day. But that is a conversation for another time and place as it is not the point of this blog post.

In fact, whether or not you yourself should be twerking is not the point of this blog post either.  Because truth be told, we here at Prime Your Pump enjoy the odd twerk ourselves – so who are we to tell you not to ‘shake that ass?’

However, what we can say without hesitation, is that if you are going to twerk, please do so without any iPhones present.

And if your twerking session does somehow make its way to your iPhone, please DO NOT post it to social media!

Why?

Well this is where United Airlines and the 3 poor dogs come in.

Because it can ruin the reputation you have worked so long to build…in an instant.

That is the point of today’s blog post – reputation.

You only have one and you really need to be careful to protect it.

When I was hiring people, you better believe I did background research on them and checked out their social media accounts.  If someone is dumb enough to put a picture or video of themselves doing something stupid on social media, how can I be sure they wouldn’t put our organization at similar risk by doing something stupid at work?

According to Mashable.com, 78% of hiring managers use search engines to do research on potential hires and 63% check the social media accounts of potential hires.

Nowadays, everyone has a cell phone, meaning everyone has the potential to be a famous journalist, which also means that you have the potential to be the subject of their article.

As bad as all 4 United incidents have been, there is one thing that has made them even worse…social media and cell phones.  If those incidents had happened pre-social media and pre-cell phones they would have not had nearly the negative impact on the airline that they do today.

Corporations have metrics such as market value and other things like shitty Yelp reviews to let them know how much their reputation has taken a beating due to their stupid behavior.

Problem is, you do not, so you may never know the ramifications of yours…so be careful and be smart!

Use it or Lose It:

Please be careful with your reputation and guard it with your life and keep these things in mind:

  Be mindful of what you put on social media

  Make your social media accounts private – so only your friends who you are ok sharing your personal life have access to them

  There are a lot of good articles on how to protect your reputation online, it may be a good idea for you to check some of them out.

When to ‘Protect Your Reputation’:

  Always! Everyone needs to be very mindful of their reputation, because once it is tarnished it easy very tough to repair.

Discuss:

  Do you have any stories or examples on how someone you know posted something on social media that they regret?

 

Until next time, keep shakin’ that ass (in private and NOT on social media) and as always…PYMFP!
–Rick

 

P.S.  If you haven’t already done so, sign up to receive our Weekly Blog Posts Summary in your inbox by clicking here.

 

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