One of the first things that many people do is to Google themselves. This is something that you should do as well. The information that comes up is the first online impression that many people who are inquiring about you will have. If you have a very common name then this can present a situation where your information may become conflated with another’s. Also, you want to have an idea of what information searchers are seeing.
After you’ve done this, the next thing to do is scrub your online information. This means that you are going to go to Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and any other online location that may have information about you, and curate that information to present the best possible version of yourself that you can. This entails removing from view posts, pictures, and tweets that you would want to share with someone that you are just meeting. Removing can be deleting those items or simply altering your privacy and share settings for those accounts so that only those whom you want to see them will see them. Now we all know that nothing ever truly is gone from the internet, but the goal is to make it more difficult for undesirable content to pop up with a passive search.
After you’ve scrubbed your accounts you can become proactive and increase the positive information about yourself. You can begin this by creating an email and social media accounts that are a variation of your name. So if your name is John Doe and a middle initial and becomes John E. Doe. This enables you to craft a professional online image that is stocked with all of the images and content that will be beneficial in the long run. You can buy the domain version of your name and use it a blog to chronicle your professional persona. At the same time, you can create Google Alerts to monitor references to you online and you also need to monitor photos that you are tagged in and have them removed if they don’t place you in the best light.
Finally, if all of this seems a little too daunting then consider a company like reputationdefender.com or cleanyourname.com to assist you with managing your online reputation.
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