This post is sponsored by Squarespace, which makes it easy for anyone to build a personal brand online. Use the code CONTESSA for 10% off of your site.
So, you’re looking for a new job, new clients, or to make new professional connections?
Like it or not, all of these people are looking at your social media accounts, whether through curiosity or via a more serious background check. Whether you're actively job-seeking, casually networking, or if you’re a budding entrepreneur, you’ll want your online presence to reflect the best version of you and your capabilities.
So, ask yourself this one very important question: Am I proud of everything I’ve ever posted online?
If the answer is no, you’ve got some cleaning to do! Not to worry, though, we’re here to help.
A DISCLAIMER: We aren’t here to tell you to erase or re-write your digital history. Rather. We want you to be able to put your best foot forward—to ensure that any of your professional suitors are finding your most impressive talents online, whether through your social media or a stunning online portfolio.
Clean Up Your Social Media Profiles
If you have any/all of these social profiles, go through them, one-by-one.
If you don’t use them much anymore, delete them altogether. If you do, clean them up. Maybe you can’t live without your Flickr photos from your senior year of college. If that’s true, consider downloading them to a hard drive and erasing from the internet. Your next manager might not be interested in your flip cup abilities.
Here are a few other social media platforms you might want to audit, privatize, or delete.
- YouTube
- Tik Tok
- Vimeo
- Tumblr
- Flickr
- Snapchat
Out with the Old, In with the Impressive
Here’s a checklist of things you will want to flag + promptly delete—across any and all accounts. If you feel particularly attached to any college party pictures, screenshot them and save them to your own phone.
Remove These:
- Inappropriate photos or posts
- Drug use or excessive drinking in any photos or posts
- Negative content about a current or former employer
- Any posts that are negative, laced with expletives, or downright mean
- A million selfies
Replace With These:
- Professional-looking “PG” Photos
- Content that is positive and friendly
- Content that boasts great grammar and spelling
- Content that showcases your interest in your industry
- Photos of you participating in an industry event
It’s all about flooding the internet with your marketable skills. Are you an amazing graphic designer? Post your latest design on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Did you recently publish an amazing article under your own byline? Share it across all platforms. More important than erasing anything old, it’s important to show the timeline and trajectory of your varied skills and successes.
Google Yourself
That’s right. Google your name. If you’re lucky enough to have a common name, then Googling might not yield a ton of information on you. However, if you happen to have a one-of-a-kind name, you will want to carefully sift through the results.
If a Google search provides you with less-than-savory results, figure out what you can delete, what you can ask others to remove from the internet, or how you can displace these results with new, impressive results.
We’re not suggesting that you edit history. Every employer, colleague, and potential connection has their own embarrassing drunk photos, too. What we are encouraging you to do, instead, is to put your own Google search results to work for you, wherever you can.
If you have a unique name, you can even go so far as to buy the domain associated with your name. Use that domain to build your personal portfolio, showcase your creative side projects, or to use as a digital business card to connect searchers directly to you.
Sound too intense? Use a platform like Squarespace to set up your name-based portfolio today (seriously.)
Audit Your Twitter (+ All of Your Tweets)
Remember when Twitter only allowed 140 characters? And, yet, people were able to use the social platform to make inflammatory and discriminatory posts. Now that the character limit is 280 characters, that gets some people in twice the trouble.
We are all familiar with high-profile firings due to old Twitter posts. Just because you thought something to be poignant at the ripe age of 15 doesn’t mean it applies to you now.
Delete any problematic posts. Not sure what’s problematic? Go through your feed, tweet by tweet, and ask yourself this question: “Is this something I’d like my future boss to see?”
If the answer is even a maybe, hit that delete button. You won’t miss any of your tweets. I guarantee it.
f you have a Twitter account—or any social media account—with a large number of problematic posts of photos, you might consider enacting a full delete.
Build Your New Impressive Portfolio
We have been hinting at this throughout the article, but now is the time.
Once you’ve cleaned out all the party pics, the potentially iffy tweets, and the general glory days of your youth, it might be time to create a new presence.
That’s right, we’re talking your own portfolio, blog, or personal website. Nothing is going to drive web traffic to “Selena McGillicutty Consulting” quite like selenamcgillicutty.com, so what are you waiting for?
By building a personal website through Squarespace, you don’t need to worry about technical SEO elements like site maps, SSL certificates, clean HTML markups, tagging, or mobile optimization. Why? Because Squarespace takes care of all the nitty-gritty technical SEO elements for you.
Instead, use Squarespace’s clean template to finally start that food blog, to showcase your beautiful wedding photography, or to showcase marketing projects you have completed—all under your own name.
Claim your space on the internet. Put your name to use for you using Squarespace.
This post is sponsored by Squarespace, which makes it easy for anyone to build a personal brand online. Use the code CONTESSA for 10% off of your site.
