How To Save Yourself From Embarrassing Social Media Posts
If you’ve been active on social media for any length of time, chances you’ve posted a thing or two in the past that you’re more than a little embarrassed about. For bands and artists in particular, such postings can be harmful to your career and reputation. Thankfully, there are a few ways you can save yourself from such social media embarrassments.
Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
I have standard operating advice to any musician, artist or band posting on social media – keep your posts as professional as possible. We’ve seen so many celebrities, artists, sports and media figures, and politicians needlessly harm their careers as a result of some embarrassing social media posts, even if they were way in the past. That’s not something that you want to have happen to you.
But what if you’ve already posted something that you’re uncomfortable with? There is a way to clean it all up, although it’s easier on some social platforms than others. Here’s an overview of what to do.
There are a few 3rd party services that will wipe your Twitter data for you, but you probably want to archive it first. From the settings page on the web, click Your Twitter data and then Download an archive of your data. Follow the instructions to save your data.
You can also delete tweets individually if you want, but this is a manual operation. Check your posts on your profile, then click the arrow next to one and choose Delete to remove it forever. You not finished though – be sure to click Tweets & replies to see any replies that might pertain to the deleted tweet and delete those as well. Feel better now?
Facebook gives you a lot more flexibility on both finding the posts that make you cringe, then deleting them. First you probably want to archive your activity so go to your Facebook settings page on the web, then click Your Facebook information and click on the Download your information option in the list.
In order to find and delete either a single post or a bulk number of them, on the web click on your avatar (top right) to go to your profile, then select Manage posts. The next screen shows both your own posts and the posts you’ve been tagged in. From there you can use the Filters button to jump to a particular year and month, and more. Then select the posts you want to get rid of and click Next. The final screen allows you to either hide or delete your selections (check out the graphic above).
By far the most difficult platform to clean posts from is Instagram. As with the other social platforms you can archive you past posts by logging into Instagram on the web, then clicking your avatar, then Settings, Privacy and Security, and finally Request Download.
You can only delete a post on your mobile device though. First, tap the profile icon on the bottom right in order to see your posts, then tap on any picture or video to select it, then tap on the three dots on the top right. From there you can Delete the post (which erases it completely) or Archive it, which hides it from everyone but you, as well as its likes and comments.
In order to delete any comments, first swipe left on the comment ,then tap on the trash can icon. You can delete any user comments underneath your own photos and videos, and also delete your own comments on posts made by other people.
There’s a lot more information about how to delete embarrassing social media posts on this article on Gizmodo.
