Do You Even Know How You Look Online?

Personalized Social Media Marketing

Have you ever Googled yourself?  It's not as dirty as it sounds, or as narcissistic.  But, seriously.  Have you?  If you haven't, you should.  Because everyone else will and you want to know what they're seeing.  Or if they're actually seeing you and not someone else by the same name.  Unless that someone else happens to be a life saving super hero CEO of a fortune 500 company.  Then you might not mind being mistaken for them.  Unfortunately, it's more likely that it'll be some guy with your name known for the pictures of his stuffed squirrel collection he posts to Facebook.  So what can you do about the results that show up in a search for your name?  And why should you care?

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For one thing, you should care because you want people to

get the right idea about you.  Especially if you're looking for a job or are the face of your business.  You want to give the impression of a normal, professional person. Stuffed squirrel collections tend to indicate the opposite.  When someone finds you online, chances are it's the first time they're coming into contact with you so you're making your first impression.  You only get once chance at it so you want to make sure it's a good one.  You can control what people see, to some extent.  Just remember, once you post something online it's there forever. Let that sink in.  Forever here means FOREVER.  As in permanently available to anyone with even rudimentary search skills.  Remember those really horrible pictures of Beyonce that her publicist demanded be taken down recently?  No? Search "really bad Beyonce pictures".  Go ahead.  I'll wait.  If Beyonce can't get painfully unflattering pictures removed, how successful do you think you're going to be?  The point is, don't post it in the first place.  If it's not something you'd plaster to your garage door for all your neighbors to see, you don't want to post it online.

Is this the impression you want to make?

But if you've already got things posted online that may be unflattering, incriminating or actually illegal, there are ways to minimize what people will see in a quick Google search.  First, ask your Facebook friends to un-tag you from their pictures and set your privacy so that only friends can see your posts.  When you open the "Privacy Settings and Tools" there is a section called "Who Can Look Me Up?" Set this on "Friends" and turn the search engine capability to "Off".  This isn't going to prevent people from seeing a lot of what you post but it will limit things a bit.  Unfortunately, Facebook isn't geared to be very private so keep that in mind when you post and when you're tagged.

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This is the impression you want to make

The best thing to do is create positive things to be found about you online.  Get a Pinterest account and re-pin a few things to establish some credibility to the account.  Pin things that won't reflect badly on you, like career advice or pictures of kittens.  Make sure your LinkedIn profile is complete and professionally done.  Then open a Twitter account.  Again, don't tweet anything that would make you look bad.  Follow professionals in your industry or a company you'd like to work for.  This gives multiple accounts attached to your name to come up on the first page of Google search results.  Which helps the things you'd rather not be seen get pushed further down the list and off the first page.

You can't completely control what's out there online already.  It's there.  And it's never going away.  Ever.  But you can minimize the effect it has by adding in some positive accounts and profiles that will be found first.  Moving forward, keep in mind that you don't want to post anything that might reflect badly on you.  Yes, you should have the freedom to express yourself in any way you choose without judgement.  Absolutely.  But, there's a time and a place.  And that applies to what you choose to display online, too.  Choose wisely.  Everyone's watching.