Spring Cleaning Your Online Presence

Spring is officially here! Most of us think of spring cleaning as organizing cabinets and closets, but one area often overlooked is our online presence. With many people now passing the 10-year mark on Facebook and LinkedIn, there is a lot of content about us online that is out-of-date. How long has it been since you cleaned up your social media pages? Networking is the best way to land a new job, so use this checklist to help you present a professional and career-driven presence to your network.

1. Define Your Personal Brand
You are a brand. People are buying into what you post and how you react to different things online. How you present yourself matters. Think of a few keywords or phrases that you’d like people to associate you with (professional, active, well educated, subject matter expert, socially conscious, fearless, motivated) and make sure your content reflects the image you want to portray.

2. Clean Up Your Content
Social media platforms can become like a messy closet. Employers will check you out online, so this is even more of a reason to make sure your social media presence reflects positively on you. Organize your online content and delete things that no longer reflect where you want to go in your personal life or your career. If you’re using an old photo photo from Halloween 2008 as your profile photo, it’s time to change it.

3. Update Your Bio or ‘About Me’ section
I shudder to think of what was in the ‘About’ section when I first joined Facebook 12 years ago. Social media platforms have changed so much over the years. If it has been a while since you last updated your LinkedIn summary, or the “About” section on Facebook, now is a good time to take a closer look. Make sure your words and photos reflect where you are at this point in your life.

4. Tidy Your Contacts & Groups
The value of social media in a job search is the networking element. Each platform has a slightly different audience and your “friends” or followers can be leveraged in ways to help you advance your career and job prospects. If you're trying to break out of one industry and into another, update your groups to reflect that. Your social network should have a strong base of people you really know and who you think are good people. If you find that your network is full of people you don’t personally know or talk to anymore, it’s time to clean house. You can definitely reconnect with older contacts, but you can also seek out new connections and try to gain new networking prospects and inspiration.