What Are Your Plans for Your Social Media in the Afterlife?

This is a serious blogpost, folks!

Honest!

In fact, I’ll even go so far as to say that it’s a public service announcement.

Let’s talk about this!

A couple of days ago, I received a message on LinkedIn from a friend asking if I’d heard about somebody we’d used to work for.

The message gave no clues and I had no reason to suspect the worst.

I checked the LinkedIn profile of the individual mentioned by my friend and there was the face I knew smiling back at me.

Well, a few minutes later, my friend replied to my return query stating that our former boss was dead from a sudden heart attack (Why do people always say sudden, who schedules a heart attack?) and had been dead for two weeks.

Now, the moral of this story is what should you do with your social media when you kick the bucket?

Do you want to discontinue it or simply keep smiling for all eternity as if nothing had ever happened to you?

It might be satisfactory in a ghoulish sort of way to think about all the recruiters trying to interest you in that new position.

Or, all the spam that’s going to be wasted on you.

LinkedIn will even be touting you and all the other stiffs in their database as evidence of how significant their reach is!

So, you can pass off from this mortal coil knowing that you finally put one over on somebody.

However, if you’re somebody who likes to wrap up your affairs properly whenever you’re finished somewhere then you might want to think about this when you do your estate planning.

A word of caution here, there’s a of discussion about this topic from our lawyer friends about what can and can’t be done here.

I expect as more Baby Boomers and their descendants kick off that we’ll get some clarity here.  (Not to mention bills for their services.)

At a minimum, make sure that your survivors have a list of your social media accounts and sign on credentials.

Leave instructions for how you want these accounts closed down.

Periodically, as you review your estate planning, check to see that these are in accord with current TOS’s.

Whether or not you wish to leave a final signing off post on your social media, I leave that decision to you.

That’s it for now!

Please check out my 8 step approach for developing a social media program for more ideas on how to use social media.

Also, never forget to reach out to either ask questions or to ask for help from someone like myself! In the meantime, thank you for following and reading my blog.

I look forward to any and all comments that you may have. I will reply to any comments made to this blog post as promptly as I can.

And, remember!

I do this for a living and if I can be of any assistance to either you or your organization, please feel free to call on me. Our initial discussion will be of no charge to you.

I can also be reached at conpsweeney@someddi.com.

My Twitter handle is @conpsweeney.

Stay well!