If people search for your name online, what are they going to find? If it’s not something you’ve previously considered, it’s worthwhile to quickly check out what comes up when you type your name into the bar for a search.
It’s especially important to have a full understanding of your online reputation if you’re going to try and find a new job or you’re making some other major life change.
If you search for your name and you don’t love what you see, what can you do? The following are six tips to proactively clean up your online reputation.
1. Fully Assess the Damage
You need to identify the damaging information that exists about you, even though it might not be a lot of fun to do so. You should look at not only Google but other major search engines like Bing and Duck Duck Go. Look through at least the first four or five pages of the results.
You can then sign up to receive Google alerts so that if information about you is added or updated, you’ll get an email letting you know.
There are companies that can help you monitor and even repair your online reputation if you’re willing to pay for them.
If you put your name into quotation marks when you’re searching it, it will help limit what you find to exact messages. You should also consider doing a Google Image search of your name.
As part of your assessment, check out any social media sites you can think of, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. You can do a Google search of Facebook and other social media sites by typing in “your name site:Facebook.com,” of course, changing it based on the site you’re searching.
2. Clean Up What You Can
On your own social media pages and profiles, you can delete a lot of the content that you wouldn’t like the world to see, especially not someone like an employer.
You have to remember when you’re cleaning up your social media that every profile you’ve ever created can still be found. You have to also think about other things like the comments and pictures not only you posted but that you were mentioned in. Look at the groups you’ve joined, online discussions you’ve participated in, and the apps that you use.
Go through everything you can find on social media and consider how other people might perceive it.
Unfriend people who may have bad reputations online themselves because you don’t even want to be associated with anything negative.
3. Lock Down Your Social Media Pages
After you’ve cleaned up, you should check the privacy settings on all your accounts. Change your privacy settings to make sure only people you’re friends with can see what you post. You also want to limit what other people can post about you.
On Facebook, for example, you can block people from tagging you on anything without your permission. They can still technically tag you, but unless you approve it, it’s not public.
4. Don’t Use the Nuclear Option
If you’re making a change in your life, like looking for a new job, you may feel tempted to nuke everything you can online. You delete all of your accounts and try to completely erase your online presence and digital footprint.
This isn’t always the best option.
The reality is that employers expect people to have a digital identity, and if you don’t, it can be suspicious.
It’s better to have a positive online reputation in many cases than nothing at all.
5. Politely Ask If Needed
Sometimes, there are things posted about you online that you can’t clean up on your own. For example, maybe there’s something negative in a blog post or news story that pops up about you, or there could be something a social media connection has posted about you.
The best thing you can do in these situations is politely to contact the poster and ask them to take it down.
6. Build a Positive Presence
Building a positive presence is a good way to be appealing to employers, and it can also push down anything negative so that it’s not showing up within the first four or five pages of a search of your name. There is a lot you can do to build a positive online presence, including:
- Start a blog. If you start a blog, then your name is going to be attached to each of your posts. If a future employer is looking you up, they’re likely to be impressed with your blog, especially if it’s somewhat related to your career or professional interests.
- Update all of your profile pictures. Even if you lock down your social media profiles, most of the time, your main profile picture will still be visible to anyone searching, so change these to represent a mature, professional appearance. Even if you’re just using the accounts for personal purposes, a nice picture is going to convey a better image.
- Get your own domain name, which can help you build a positive professional brand. You can buy a domain name for a relatively low annual cost, and you can use your site to showcase who you are as a professional. You can make it into a portfolio or resume site, or you might want to use your name as the name of your blog.
- Create social media profiles that are just for professional purposes. LinkedIn is a great resource. You can join communities and reach out to contacts. You can also share links to your work and blog through LinkedIn itself.
There’s plenty you can do to clean up your entire digital footprint and make it more positive going forward. Be mindful of what people can see about you because you never know when it’s going to be relevant or if someone is going to search for your name.
If you’re in a worst-case scenario type of situation, then you might hire online reputation management professionals. These services use a lot of various tactics to help people fix their online reputation and also have positive information show up at the top of search results.