The “Weekly Wrap Up” post is published every Friday and highlights the concluding week’s activities and events through text, images and video. I hope you enjoy and encourage you to subscribe via RSS and/or Email.

“Pause Before You Post” – It is one of eBranding Me’s founding principals and the first step in protecting an individual’s personal reputation online. In its simplest form, Pause Before You Post helps Generation Y students realize the implications of pressing publish too soon. “If you have to think about whether or not an update is appropriate or an image suitable for an online social network, then it is most likely not.”

While it took me nearly 5 years of participating in online communities to realize the importance of maintaining a professional image, it has taken Paul Kim and Billy Rose, two Northern Highlands Regional Highschool students, far less. Kim and Rose are seniors preparing to apply for college and begin the transition into higher education. The daunting admissions process led them to discover the importance of privacy in our increasingly transparent society.

As Honors Marketing students they have opted to participate in a national competition for emerging leaders and entrepreneurs: DECA. Kim and Rose explained to me that they “decided to spread awareness of the consequences of social media posting” as their Public Relations Project. As they clearly stated, “a lot of issues have surfaced over the course of our fours years, and we realized a lot of our peers were unaware of the many consequences” of over-sharing on social networking websites.

Thus, their goal is to gather research on the topic, develop a message targeted towards their peers and deliver said message to their community through planned assemblies at local high schools and regional middle schools. Ideally, their PR campaign will pass the state level of the DECA competition and continue on to be presented at the National level.

I attended their first parent night on Tuesday evening where they discussed the dangers of social networking posting, the perspectives of high school students and teachers, how large organizations are using social networking and finally, how one might control the short and long-term consequences of participating in the space. The presentation was a great success and the parents in attendance left with a strong understanding of some key preventative measures to discuss with their children.

I look forward to aiding Kim and Rose throughout their project. For more resources on privacy concerns on social media websites, please visit eBranding Me.