W10.1 Online Profile Pages
Online Profile Pages
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If you Google yourself, what do you find? How many of the "Page 1" links are actually yours? For me, I control the information on 9 out of 10 of the first page links for Google searches, though I control almost none of the images (there is a model with my name). However, this is not necessarily a bad thing, I'm okay with people thinking I look like a model. There are several places you may want to create and/or edit your profile. I would avoid including items like birthdays, addresses, phone numbers, hobbies, and favorites. We often use "favorite books, favorite restaurants, etc. as security questions for websites, so I would avoid sharing these in an easy-to-search public site. Stick to sharing information about your expertise, presentations, websites, and other professional artifacts.
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The task for this week? Find and clean up all those digital profiles that are lurking out there on the Internet. Chances are, you haven’t ever really given it much thought, but you might have as many as twenty profiles collecting cobwebs in cyberspace. When someone finds you, do you want them to see outdated information? Heck no! Not only would that be unprofessional, but it might lead to some pretty awkward conversations.
Before you begin, you might want to find the most recent bio that you’ve written and copy it to a new document. Update it and write a few different versions. For example, you might have a lengthy version for a professional site, a more personal version for your own site, and then a short and quick to read version for sites like Twitter. Please be careful not to reveal too much information about yourself (only you can decide how much is too much). Personally, I avoid putting my phone number and address out there in public forums as much as possible.
You should also choose a couple photos or images (no more than 3) to represent yourself in your profiles. Since we tend to associate our memories about relationships with images we remember, I wouldn’t change your profile images very often (Facebook is the exception to that rule, since you know those people pretty well already). Consider this: If you don’t know somebody well, then the only visual “anchor” they have for their memories of interactions with you is that profile picture you choose. Don’t underestimate the power of this association.
Without further ado, let’s begin to tackle that list of profiles. Let me start by giving you a list of of places that you might start looking for those stagnant profiles:
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