How To Keep A Professional Online Presence

How To Keep A Professional Online Presence pexels.com Your future employer can simply type in your name and find out essentially everything they need to know about you everything from your social media pages to probably that random forum you posted those very interesting comments in that one year. Your online presence starts the minute you start making yourself more known to the internet. If you think that one picture of you getting wasted at that bar won’t get back to future employers, then you are very wrong. Nothing you put on the internet remains just for you once you upload or send. There are ways though to make a better presentation of yourself online and to keep it looking professional with a presence your future bosses will be impressed with. 1. Search yourself.  Many people have been guilty of this for purely vain reasons, but you want to maintain a good professional online presence. Searching yourself will let you see a few of the things that everyone, not just employers, can see or learn about you when just simply Google searching your name. You can set up Google alerts for when your name is searched or just to see new content that comes up associated with your name. These notifications can be sent to you through email. 2. Remove your results.  As said above, you can do a Google search of yourself. If you don’t find anything that can deter you from getting that job you want, then just monitor from now on just in case. On the other hand, if you do find something you don’t like, there is a way you can remove/erase what you don’t want to see: things like fake profile accounts, hackers, someone who trolled you, or if it is your own behavior. This goes for many other social sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. 3. Invest in more professional sites.  Sites like Facebook are fine for purely social purposes or for reconnecting, but there are sites out there that are strictly user-friendly professional sites. These sites include things like LinkedIn or WayUp. With these sites you won’t have to worry too much about incriminating pictures or anything else that could be an issue. Both sites are set strictly for things like networking and finding jobs. 4. Spruce up your presence.  Make sure that on professional sites such as LinkedIn that you fill out all areas of your profile as much as you can. Since it is an online site, you can’t physically speak to the other person looking at your profile, so you want to make yourself as likable as possible. A good thing to think about doing is creating a professional persona of yourself on Facebook; upload a good looking profile picture and steer clear of unflattering photo galleries. If you do decide to create a separate professional online profile, then you want to make sure the pictures you present are exactly what you want to portray. 5. Sign up for things that show off your skills.  Depending on what you are good at or are trying to present there are certain sites that cater to your interests. Sites like WordPress or Blogger (or Uloop!) are good for people who like to write, while sites like Etsy are good for people who want to start businesses on their own, in addition to sites like Flickr or Picasa where you can showcase your photos. When professionals see something like that, it shows that you are making an effort and in some cases a profit. You want to make it easier to find you, but you want to make it so that when they find you they are impressed with what they see. Businesses see online accounts all the time, so they want to know what makes you stand out and what makes you special. Since you cannot express these skills so much into words, showcasing yourself can make a huge difference depending on who is looking for you. pexels.com The online world is a tricky place to navigate and sometimes people tend to get lost in it. The things you do when youre younger and what you upload online can come back to haunt you, but no one ever said that you can’t reinvent yourself. So why not start now?