Cultivating a Life Online

I am a firm believer that from time to time, we must allow ourselves a moment to conduct a form of internal evaluation exercise, clarifying that the person or ‘avatar’ we develop in social networks is really the person we want to be, and be seen as. The first thing is to plan a series of goals or achievements that we must meet to develop our purposes in the network. These purposes can be personal or professional. Examples of these goals may include personal ambitions such as getting a love interest towards the end of the year, ambitious pursuits like becoming mayor of your city, or professional endeavours like presenting yourself as a trustworthy seller more concerned about the welfare of clients than pure financial gain.

As I wrote before, the purposes are varied and we must bear in mind that when we have many goals or objectives at the same time, one can play against the other. If I offer to be aware of my clients 24 hours a day and resolve questions promptly, this alone is very possible; however if I do not have an employee who can keep an eye on things on my behalf then I may end up in a situation whereby I have no time to pursue other goals like going on a date, and if I do find the time I’ll likely be overly distracted by phone calls, messages and emails. Therefore, it is best to start with small and practical goals, increasing the demands we place upon ourselves little-by-little over time.

You cannot expect to have twenty thousand followers in less than an hour if you have never created content, much less if it is your first time posting on social networks. We establish our place within these online networks in a gradual way, much as we do when getting to know someone in any other walk of life; first we start making an impression of ourselves, then a conversation, later a friendship and from that link a level of trust is generated. In person it takes us years, even decades, to become known as friends, professionals or a committed husband or wife. Even so there are always surprises; imagine then what happens in the network that is a cold and more technological medium where words, emoticons, and even photos and videos play a part in crafting our online persona. So to begin this internal evaluation exercise we should all try to do the following:

1. Create a character profile (Avatar) in the same write psychological characteristics by which I want to be known.
2. Be clear about the Avatar’s objectives in the network. Direct my publications towards the purpose to be achieved.
3. This is the most important of all, read your posts from time to time and see if what you’re posting on the networks (call Facebook, Instagram, twitter, snapshot, etc.) corresponds to the profile you designed at the beginning.

When you finish developing this exercise and see that your profile and goals do not correspond to your publications, you should look for ways to amend the course. That is to say, correct what does not help to develop your goals and even create ways to improve your image. In the end, this online Avatar is your other self, it is part of you, in the best of cases it’s yourself and you must take care of how to present yourself to the world.

Luis Del Prado - Contributor

Luis is a scriptwriter, teacher and journalist for newspapers and magazines in Lima, Peru.

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