I stood in front of the Com­puter Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems class at the local com­mu­nity col­lege where I was invited to do the pre­sen­ta­tion I travel around to local schools with, Social Media 4 Stu­dents. Every­thing was going quite well as I warmed up the class of 30 or so mainly 20-something  stu­dents in the com­puter lab.

“How many of you use social media?” I asked. Silence, and then, “You mean like Face­book?” some­one asked. “Yes, like Face­book,” I said. About 80% of the class raised their hand for Face­book, but when I polled them on Twit­ter only a few did, no one had a LinkedIn account and just one per­son had a blog. He posted his gam­ing scores there. As I gauged the class — because I didn’t want to talk below or above their level, it occurred to me that exam­ples out­side of my pre­sen­ta­tion would come in handy and make the class more inter­ac­tive. We were in a com­puter lab after all.

I asked what the value of estab­lish­ing a per­sonal brand and then apply­ing it to social media would be for a stu­dent. I got the deer in head­lights look. “Well, let’s look at an exam­ple,” smartly said the ninja.… “Google my name, Karla Porter.” Heads went down and keys rhyth­mi­cally played my name in uni­code asyn­chro­nous cacophony.

And then, one by one, heads raised up as eyes as large as saucers honed in and locked with mine. I sensed some­thing clearly wasn’t quite right. I advanced for­ward to the near­est student’s flat screen. There it was..

Karla Porter — Six denied bail in mur­der scheme

As I reas­sured the class I couldn’t be in jail and in their class at the same time they recov­ered quickly and grins appeared on their relieved faces. Over night, this woman had knocked me to page rank hell with a lot of stu­pid­ity and a lit­tle pay­ola to some hit men.  “Don’t worry class,” I chuck­led, “I’ll knock her back down to where she belongs right quick,” and I con­tin­ued on with my presentation.

As it turned out, it was the per­fect exam­ple to make the state­ment — when some­one searches your name who and what will they find?

There is another Karla Porter I have come to know via social media, she’s my tocaya the Mod­ern Media Mom, and she rocks.

P.S. I put the unsa­vory char­ac­ter back in her place but it wasn’t easy, she got tons of media atten­tion.