Blogging is another means of communication that reflects a person’s attitudes, ideas, interests, and values. Many of these characteristics gel with a few others to ultimately make up an individual’s personality or as we refer to it here at Hogan – “reputation.”

Companies and employees spend quite a bit of time and money on employee development programs. These engagements are designed to make an employee aware of behaviors that impede their performance, future opportunities, and relationships with other employees.  Let’s face it, changing reputation takes a lot of effort. To be successful, an employee must target specific, non-desirable behaviors time and time again until their natural derailing tendencies are curtailed and replaced with new desirable ones. If they are successful, other people’s perceptions of them change and so does their reputation.

However, it only takes a few oversights to erode their progress of change. One such oversight, that can undo all of their hard work, is not managing their online personality. With the pervasiveness of social media, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, often an employee forgets these sites are an extension of themselves. Like it or not, blogging creates reputation. In many instances, an employee can have more than 1,000 connections, friends or followers on these websites. Trying to keep track of which people are outside the corporate circle, not somehow otherwise connected to co-workers or even future employers, is just not manageable.

When creating your development plan to change negative components of your reputation, don’t forget to consider and include your personality found in social media. It just may make the extra difference in changing your behaviors and ultimately your reputation, getting you that promotion at work, and strengthening your relationships with your co-workers.