My career as a freelancer begins today. I reckon one of the first things I oughta do is perhaps take some time to make sure that when potential clients google "Evans Tucker", they don't end up reading my ridiculous personal blog...
Or perhaps I shouldn't care? The growing technological nature of our existence will either force the Internet to get very boring by shaming us all into putting only the most bland, censored content online, or we will all just have to accept that our private lives (by which I mean the content that we post on our blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) are not so private. We will have to learn to live with those drunken photos of us waving machetes around - we will have to proudly exclaim, "Yes! That was a good New Year's Eve party! Don't worry, no one was hurt. So, am I hired?"
What do you think my friends? My family?
How about you, my potential clients? Don't be shy. :)
Personally I think you should leave it up so people know you are "real" and not just some robot. They might prefer someone with a personality. Since you are working for yourself you have to "brand" yourself somehow that makes you stand apart from your competition. I'd say if you were working for a company, you'd have to pull that stuff back since the company is "branding" you on your behalf.
ReplyDeleteAs long as there isn't anything offensive on there, I'd leave it up personally.
I think Tim has a good point about you having more freedom in this regard since you're not beholden to a boss/company. If you are worried about losing clients due to personal life content - and you care about the clients more than the content - by all means take it all down! If it means more to you to have a totally authentic personal web presence than to possibly lose someone someday just because they hate machetes, then by all means leave it up! I suppose there's an argument to be made that whatever you put up never goes away, but unless you're planning to run for political office someday I doubt any future employers or other intersted persons would be interested enough to go looking up old cached stuff. (at least that's what I tell myself about all those old "I hate law school!" blog posts:)
ReplyDeleteThat said, I still have my facebook under my maiden name so that people who know me through work won't easily find and try to friend me, so admittedly I would tend to err on the side of caution on this issue:)
All publicity is good publicity right? No... My solution was to make my blog 99% impersonal, but perhaps your blog could be a mix. It could be a sort of advertisement, a statement of character, and a display of wit for your freelance work.
ReplyDelete