Build a #positive #professional #online #presence

Today you have to manage more than your resume if you want to get ahead in your career.

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Being presentable, polished and articulate are no longer enough. Your online reputation plays a huge role in how people, especially your potential employers perceive you. Here are a few tips to help you present yourself online in the best possible light.

If you run a business, have a website, provide a service or otherwise need a base of customers or readers to sustain your business, you’ll want people to find you. So if you’ve never thought about what might appear in the search results when the topic is you, it’s time to put some stock in your online reputation. How you appear online is people’s first impression of you. How do you want to be perceived? Are you proud about what sites and articles appear under your name in search engines? You should if you want to build a business or get a job.

In order for people to find you online, you need to be consistent. Wherever you are online (personal blog, business website etc) you should have consistent names. If you start a website or blog under your full name, do the same for your social network profiles. Being consistent allows people to follow your digital tracks and not get confused. It also re-emphasises your brand when people see the same picture, name and positioning on every site.

If you have a personal social network profile, you know that there are chances of some of that information getting leaked in the future.

A few damage control steps:

-Delete any photos of you that might send the wrong message

-Go through your friend’s photos (where you’re tagged) and request them to delete those you aren’t comfortable sharing.

-Set strict privacy measures for your personal ones so they aren’t searchable by others and so that people can’t even see your profile picture.

Keep it up

After you’re ready to build a positive online presence, here are a few things to consider:

-Make sure it’s easy for people to find you, be it a potential customer or someone who wants to hire you.

-Ensure what they find is a positive representation of who you are and what you offer.

-Offer information that is useful via social networks or personal or business sites. This means linking to interesting articles on Facebook, tweeting about items that your followers will find relevant and interacting with blogs or websites that are in some way associated with your career or career goals.

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