Steps To Cleaning Up Your Online Presence

A healthy online presence is something often overlooked by a business, however it’s pivotal in winning the trust of customers and growing a business. Here are some tips on how to ensure your online presence is clean and if it’s not, on how to clean it up.

1. Make A List Of Your Accounts
   The first step is to make a list of all your accounts.  This will include accounts such as Facebooks, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Reddit.  If you have accounts that you do not use regularly, you should delete them to reduce the risks of identity theft and hacks.
2. Review Your Security Settings
   Your personal social media accounts need to have enhanced privacy settings enabled.  It is important to remember that nothing is completely safe when it is posted online.  You need to pause and consider a post before you put any personal information or pictures online.
3. Think Like A Hiring Manager
   If a hiring manager finds your social media profiles and looks through them, what are they going to think?  You need to put yourself in their shoes and consider your online profiles from their point of view. This will help you determine if your profiles need to be updated and what needs to be cleaned.
4. Get a Professional CV
   A professional CV can really help you stand out from the rest. Most people tend to create their own CV and as such it’s not up to spec. I suggest you get your CV professionally written and stand out from the crowd.
5. Clean Profiles Of Inappropriate Items
   You do not have to delete all your holiday pictures, but you should delete pictures and posts that harm your chances of getting a job or a promotion.  This step requires you to understand which social media profiles are complete business-related such as LinkedIn and which are better for personal use such as Facebook and Instagram.  Inappropriate posts on LinkedIn are a big issue and many hiring managers and recruiters will view this extremely negatively.  What you post on this social media platform should help your career and you need to consider this before you post.
6. Consider The Professional Image You Want To Portray
   Are you looking to be seen as an expert in your field?  If the answer is yes, you need to consider how you can achieve this online.  You may need to provide value-adding comments to a discussion or produce some helpful articles about the subject.  Publishing blogs and articles about your area of expertise is also a good option.
7. Search For Yourself On Multiple Search Engines
   You need to take the time to search for yourself on different search engines and see what comes up.  If you find anything old or that you do not want people to see, you need to remove these items from the accounts they are linked to to clean up your online reputation.  If you find something inappropriate that someone else has posted about you, you should politely ask them to delete it.  While you need to do this, it is important to note that the content could still appear on the search engines for a while.
8. Curate Your Online Posting Content
   You should not get too caught up in your online persona that you forget about the rest of your life.  You can post about a work event or share some pictures from your volunteer work, but do not forget to live your life.

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