Through social media, we are able to significantly broaden our PLN as we can easily reach new people with a few clicks. We can also stay in touch with people who aren’t always or even near us as reaching out to — or being reached out to — by a distance weak link in our lives is much easier and faster via social media. Therefore, we can do it more often to maintain those relationships. These conveniences provided by social media make it all more engaging as well as we can more quickly and conveniently share and acquire knowledge with and from other people, and expand our knowledge and social circle (a.k.a PLNs). This said, if communication is not carried-out efficiently, misunderstandings can easily happen and cause problems and taint our digital identity (DI) or PDI. Hence why it is of high importance to always be mindful of our DI or PDI when engaging with social media. Nevertheless, through exchanges with all the different people in our PLNs, we can discover new topics, ideas and concepts and even people, which could eventually become areas of interest for ourselves or with whom we could develop strong relationships!

To strongly minimize tainting our PDI through our use of social media, it is important to consider — and perhaps always keep in the back of our minds — what our current or potential employer and coworkers could perceive us through our content and comments on social media, while still portraying who we are to a large extent as this is possibly one important reason (among numerous others) why we were hired anyway. Therefore, when building a PLN and building a strong one as a commentator or an influencer, one should always evaluate as many potential outcomes of their use of social media from the important stakeholders in their lives; for example, their employers, coworkers and clients.