A Positive Digital Footprint [2]
Establish and deliberately mould your Digital Footprint - showcasing your individual personality and voice. Here are six suggestions for how to embellish your online profile and improve your Digital Footprint:
1. Actively architect your Digital Footprint
Open accounts across at least 5 platforms (Google +, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Slideshare, Instagram, Snapchat, Wordpress blog)
Wordpress has a higher page rank than Tumblr or Blogger as a blogging platform and this should make it quicker to find on an internet search. Let your personality shine in the context of the professional you are, and the aspirations you have for your career. This could make the use of social media a challenge initially, but ultimately, it is potentially an asset for your future.
2. Make yourself easy to find
Strive to make your online profiles conspicuous and easy to find. Choose a concise, obvious username name and avoid underscores. If you create a shortened version of your name for a network such as Twitter, it is good to be consistent with it on the other platforms that you use, such as Instagram, Snapchat and Youtube too.
3. Always use the same avatar
Use the same crisp, readily recognisable headshot as an avatar across all of your profiles, to ensure that your accounts are obviously yours and not someone else's with the same name. It is not as easy as it seems - to find one avatar that you are happy with for Facebook and LinkedIn, not an airbrushed pouting selfie! A relatively formal looking headshot will serve to remind you that your purely "social" profiles can be readily accessed in a professional context, and consider everything that you say on these profiles as potentially public. Don't change your avatar too often as it can cause confusion and lose you followers.
Remember, the avatar you chose for WhatsApp, Snapchat or Tumblr is potentially accessible to anyone who has your mobile phone number or email address, from your grandma to your boss. Even that anonymous blog you have set up, may have been initiated with your email address, and so, can readily be accessible to anyone with your email address who opens an account on that platform too. It is virtually impossible to keep an anonymous blog or any other social account concealed! Anyone who has your mobile phone number will have access to you on WhatsApp - see the avatar you use and when you were last active on that platform. Anyone who has your mobile phone number or email address will be able to find you on Instagram and other platforms too. New ways to search and aggregate material by piggy backing access from one platform onto another are becoming available every day.
4. Brand yourself
Use a similar backdrop, theme, banner, font (if possible) etc across all of your profiles.
Customise the banners and backdrops on all profile pages, thus providing you with another opportunity to showcase your personality and emphasize your interests. Consider this to be your personal branding, another way to reassure anyone looking for you online, that this is indeed your material they have discovered and be reassured by the content.
5. Buy yourname.com
Even if you don't need it or intend to use it right now, ensure that you own it so that you can use it if you want it in the future. Most versions of most names will eventually be taken. Ensure that you own yours! If you attach your name to your blog, you create another opportunity for a piece of positive material to be found about you on an Internet search.
6. Privacy is dead
Ensure that there would be no unfavorable consequences if all of your profiles merged. How would your grandma, profession, boss or clients feel about the "authentic" you? Clear your search history and search for yourself online - Google yourself regularly.
Try to remove anything you do not wish others to find, and at least ensure that the material apparent on page 1 and 2 of an online search for you, will be material you are happy for everyone to see. If Facebook enabled facial recognition software tomorrow, what would a search for your image on Facebook discover? Consider contacting anyone who has posted any negative images of you online and ask to have them removed - nicely, and in person.
Showcase your qualities and personality!
Consider using resources such as Clifton Strengths Finder 2:0 to establish an honest, accurate assessment of your strengths and characteristics, and create a plan to showcase these on your social profiles.
