What is Impression Management?

Impression management, or show management, is the process by which people try to control how they are perceived by others. This includes emphasizing the positive aspects while avoiding the negative aspects of the viewed, while consciously or unconsciously. Be aware of it or not, impression management plays a huge role in personal branding, business success, and daily life. Because after all, everyone wants to be loved and accepted.

The impressions created can have a huge impact on how well the next product launch is received, whether it can provide investment funds for the business, or impress the recruiter at the next job interview. Impression management is a delicate process that needs to be carefully managed. There are many tactics that can be used to influence the impressions of the people around them about themselves or their brand, if any, and can have negative effects if not managed properly. This article contains information about what impression management is, why it is important, and impression management techniques.

Impression Management Definition

Impression management is the effort to control or influence how people perceive a person, brand or product. Whatever happens, it serves as a means to achieve the goal. For example, if a business produces soda, one of its goals is likely to increase sales. So when marketing its product, it will likely focus on the positive properties of soda (the refreshing taste, the caffeine boost, or the great factor of having them at parties) and avoid its negative aspects (full of harmful additives and sugars, they ruin teeth and can cause weight gain).

Likewise, someone looking to get a job and meeting with a prospective employer wants to make a good impression by doing their best, emphasizing their best personality traits and making a catchy conversation. He probably doesn’t want to go to this job interview in sweat suits and doesn’t mention kleptomania tendencies, if any. In both scenarios, impression management plays a key role in shaping the views others make of their person or brand. Therefore, it is a useful exercise in increasing online reputation. Impression management can be used to improve the following areas:

• Brand, service, leadership and so on. public opinion about

• Negotiation skills

• Social impact

• Relationships

• Emotional experiences

Why is Impression Management Important?

Impressions are important and this fact reflects the importance of impression management. The impressions are so important that the brain makes thousands of calculations within seconds of meeting someone new. He evaluates and judges according to the impressions how he dresses, their body language, whether they appear to be reliable, confident or approachable. When a person forms an opinion about another person or their brand, it can be difficult to reshape. That’s why it’s important to always put forward the best features.

The same is true online. A few seconds after a company searches on Google, it can be determined whether it is reliable or not. And a person or organization often wants to do their best to make their best progress online as well. This can mean clearing negative comments, ratings, negative search results, and creating more positive content about the person or organization. It should not be forgotten that; Nowadays, even a single negative comment is often enough to change the opinion of those around a person or organization about doing business with it.

While it is almost impossible to control someone else’s opinion, impression management gives a person or organization the opportunity to present themselves in a way that is more likely to evoke a positive opinion in the eyes of others. But in order to give a positive effect on the impression, absolutely no untrue information should be given because the truth often comes to the surface in some way and then degrades. Therefore, in order to create a good, strong impression, it is necessary to make sure that the claims presented to the other people are measured and true.

Impression Management Techniques

There are several impression management techniques, and these techniques can have different effects when trying to make a good impression on someone. Here are the techniques:

• Eligibility: To get the consent of the other person to agree with that person’s opinion

• Excuse: Trying to reduce the perceived impact of an event by downplaying the seriousness of it.

• Apology: Accepting responsibility for an incident and asking for forgiveness

• Introduce oneself: emphasizing the best qualities and achievements while downplaying the negative aspects.

• Compliment: Complimenting others

• Kindness: Doing something nice to gain someone’s approval or friendship

• Common aspects: Talking about people and things that you have in common with another person to develop or improve your relationship

Is Impression Management Ethical?

Impression management techniques can be used in many other ways, such as improving relationships, increasing reputation, and improving a business. Knowing how and when to say the right thing is critical for both building relationships and depicting the image in the best possible way online. However, impression management techniques are abusive. People can abuse these techniques to create overly embellished or completely wrong impressions of themselves. While this is not just an ethical act, the truth emerges in one way or another, and this can create even more harmful situations for reputation. Here reality is key. As long as impression management techniques are used specifically, there is little risk of error. There are several ways to maintain authenticity while managing impressions made on others. These ways are as follows:

• To describe himself / herself in the best way: He / she should try to describe his / her values, goals, strengths and weaknesses in the best way. These values ​​must be aligned with their goals and strive to improve all their weaknesses.

• Avoiding emotional behavior: Both negative and positive emotional outbursts can be seen as an immature personality and create a negative impression. Therefore, emotional behavior and impulsive behavior should be avoided.

• Self-confidence: It is important for a person to do what they say or what they do in a confident way, and being positive apart from that can go a long way.

Impression management is a collection of techniques used to try to control the opinions of those around a person or institution. While it is impossible to control someone else’s opinion, it can help actively manage what is said about one’s own or his brand to try to make the best possible impression.