Maintaining a polished online reputation is crucial these days. Employers will often look up your name before an interview the same way you may search the name of a potential date before you decide to take it any further. Your online profiles say a lot about you. If you haven’t yet searched your name, now’s the time to see what comes up. It may be time to update the way the rest of the world sees you.
How to Manage Your Online Reputation
Check your privacy settings: First and foremost, make sure the world is seeing only what you want it to see. Check the privacy settings on all social networks to control what kind of information is public. Make sure your phone number and email address aren’t exposed.
Update your Professional Networks: Keep your work experience relevant on professional social networks, like LinkedIn. Make sure your resume is updated and that your skills match your position or the position you’d like to attain.
Stay Friendly and Social: Try to keep your social posts friendly and productive. You won’t want that angry post surfacing right before a meeting with a client. Search within your Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts to remove anything you may no longer agree with. Do your best to delete compromising pictures if you’ve outgrown them. Make sure to un-tag yourself or ask friends to remove any shots of you you’d like to disassociate with your name.
Think of Yourself as a Brand: Try to think of your online reputation as something that should serve to show people who you are, just as if you were a brand. Do the pictures, posts, and search results support your image? If they don’t, start cleaning them up and do occasional searches to make sure they continue that way.
Don’t post anything you don’t want everyone to know: As hard as you try to keep accounts private, sometimes things slip and become visible to the whole world. Before you post anything, think about what someone who had no context of the post would think of what you’re saying. Make sure it’s something you’re ok with everyone knowing. For more tips on posting, check out this list of what not to say online.
