We have created a guide that will help you to focus on what you should be thinking about when creating a professional, career-focused social profile, how you can find out what’s appearing in your social pages and how you should clean your social profile, should you need to.
Checking your online reputation
Whatever you do online, you will be leaving a digital footprint be it on social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. Therefore it is essential that you keep track of what people are saying about you and know what you are associated with online – before it costs you your dream job.
It is essential you are proactive and that you monitor all of your online activity- both personal and professional as the line between our private and professional lives becomes increasingly. Previous example of individual making comments about their boss/company posted on social networks has a lot of employees losing their jobs. It is crucial to limit any digital faux.
The key to have a successful online reputation is to regularly check for updates and to act quickly to resolve any issues that may be arising.
Every now and then search your name on Google to monitor everything that is being said about you. If you find something that does not portray you in a bright way, you should go to the source and get it deleted immediately. You can also set up an automatic Google alert update system which notifies you when something is posted about you online; this makes it easier to actively manage your online reputation.
You should also ensure that you check Twitter and other engines on frequent basis to ensure that you have a full understanding of how you are being portrayed online. You can also use alert system such as TweetBeep or use other online tools such as MonitorThis
How to protect your privacy in social media
The first thing you need to do when opening an account in any of the social media channels is to spend some time setting the Privacy Settings of your profile up properly.
This is some other tips to consider in the main social media networks:
Your Facebook account
- Photo albums – make you photo album is as private as possible (you don’t want your employer to see the pictures of your last holiday to the States). Untag yourself from any photos you don’t want to be tagged in.
- Applications – many applications you’ve accepted will over time be sharing your personal information with 3rd parties. Try and delete the applications you don’t trust or use.
- Who can find you? You are able to decide how public your social profile are make adjustment to your social media account settings accordingly.
- Create different levels of access to your group of friends; it will make it easier to accept friendships without risking your privacy.
- Your wall – there are risk associated with what a friend may upload or post on your wall. The best way to control this risk is to monitor what is being said. If something inappropriate is posted on your wall you should delete it as soon as possible or if there is a photo of you or things that put you in a compromising position kindly ask your contact to remove it. Similar strategies apply for monitoring your LinkedIn account.
Your Twitter account
- You should consider the privacy of your account and then set it accordingly. So many people on twitter think it is about sharing every single thought with the World, why would you share your thoughts with people that don’t have your telephone number?
- You have to be extra careful while posting on twitter, you will have to make sure that you don’t post or share any material publicly which can cause you trouble while searching for a job.
- If you would like to share your tweets with other sites or social networks that include business and social users, it will be wise to create a separate account and moderate accordingly so inappropriate posts don’t get revealed in business circles.
Your LinkedIn profile
- You should be careful of what you would like to display on your public profile, the default setting allows every visitor to view your full profile. Consider this.
- Your profile picture should best display you in a professional manner.
- if your twitter account is linked into your LinkedIn account using the Tweets LinkedIn app ensure that you use a business type Twitter account because you will not be able to filter out the tweets which will be automatically loaded onto your LinkedIn profile, so be very careful on merges.
Altogether, ensure that you do not post anything that you don’t want to be known publicly and anything which can damage your reputation, a business reputation, an employer’s reputation or a co-workers reputation. To keep your privacy the best way is to keep your information and accounts private.
