FaceBook - Avoid Tattoo Regret for your online presence

The conversation about FaceBook content ownership policies serves to remind us all that posting anything to the Internet is akin to creating online tattoos for your online presence. Like a tattoo, once content is posted it can be very difficult to remove.

Professional marketers are typically aware that any messaging, print or web, can come back to haunt you. They know that with the easy expressiveness and transparency of blogging or Twitter, there can be serious consequences of poor or inappropriate content.

The FaceBook issue applies to all the social media technologies. Once something is on the Internet, there is may be little you can do to take it back. Inappropriate pictures, associations, expressions, etc, can be used against you now and far into the future.

There are some relevent lessons in the recent article in the Daily Chronicle titled Tattoo Regret.
"Derick also removes a lot of tattoos people got in their teens that don't define them as adults, she said. “I think people, when they're younger, want to identify with something. But ultimately, when you get older, you don't want to be defined by that content,” she said."

Sensible marketing planning includes thinking through messaging, themes and appropriate content for all communications, then planning before publishing. The saying goes, Think before you speak applies completely here.