In order to build a strong personal brand on the web, you need a clear and consistent image on every social network you’re a part of. We touched upon some tips in an earlier post to help raise your position in Google results when someone searches for your name online as well as how to interlink your web presence. This helps people actually find you. Now that they can find you, it should be immediately obvious to them that the profile they just came upon is YOU. A key quality of a strong personal brand is immediate recognition when someone is faced with your web identity.

So, are your social networks saying the correct things about you? Employers are looking for digital dirt about you on the web, as well as proof that you aren’t just a frat boy cruising through college without a purpose. Start taking a proactive role with these 5 tips to clean up your online web identity:

1. Take control of your photos. You’ve heard this before, but your personal and professional life are becoming one, largely due to Facebook. Go through what you have on your Facebook and MySpace and untag yourself in photos that an employer might find inappropriate. If it’s a photo you love but really should untag, download it to your computer so you’ll always have it handy. Keep in mind as you go through your photos that if you wouldn’t show your parents, you probably don’t want your potential employer finding it.

2. Set privacy settings. You have no reason to worry if employers can’t access your digital life. Facebook has greatly improved their privacy options. Take advantage of them.

3. Post photos from things other than parties. If you have photos from volunteering, studying abroad, working a job, giving a presentation, or any other semi-professional event, post them. They go a long way to help counteract other photos that might negatively impact your image.

4. Put up a clean profile photo of yourself. Even if you got a lot of compliments on your stripper Halloween costume, a profile picture that isn’t associated raucous college partying means a lot to people in hiring positions. You can send your friends a link to the picture if they really need to see it.

These are four quick tips to get started making sure your social networking profiles don’t turn potential employers away before meeting you in person. Simply use your head. If you are worried about something,  remove it.

Author: Pete Kistler

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If I search for your name in Google, will the results actually be about you?

The hallmark of a strong personal brand online is the ability to be found when someone searches for you on the web.

The first step to ensure you can be found is to create profiles on major social networks and directories including services like LinkedIn and Ziggs. Besides your “home base” website if you have one, these form the foundation of your online visibility. (Look forward to an in depth review of social networks and directories you might want to join in a future post).

If you’re already on a few social networks or directories, make sure every place you exist online links to every other place you exist online.

If you have a LinkedIn, Ecademy and Ziki profile, then these profiles should all link to each other.

This is important because Google counts every link to a web page as a “vote” for that page. Google results are really one big popularity contest. The pages that come up highest in searches for your name are generally the pages that have the most sites linking to it.

Because of this, you’ll want to get as many sites linking to your profiles as possible. And that means “interlinking” all of your profiles to get more links.

An easy way to track your interlinks is to fire up an Excel spreadsheet. Along the top row, list every social network or directory you belong to. Then list them out again in the same order down the left column. You now have a grid set up to track the interlinking between all your profiles.

The items down the left column are the places on the web you exist, and the items on the top row track whether or not there is a link to that item.

As you can see above, I grayed out a diagonal stripe to show that, for example, you can’t link from your LinkedIn page to your LinkedIn page, or your Ecademy page to your Ecademy page.

Start filling in where you already have interlinks. Let’s say that on your LinkedIn page, you already do link to your Ecamdey profile, Xing profile, Ziki profile, and Facebook profile. Fill in the first row now (the LinkedIn row) to reflect that.

The LinkedIn row now shows what you link to based on the columns that are filled in green. Do the same for Ecademy, then all your web profiles. It might look something like this:

After you’ve done some interlinking, mark which places you’ll interlink the next time you open up your personal interlink tracker. A color like yellow works well. You might also want to use red to make incomplete links stand out (unless you think that looks horrendous, which I do, but it motivates me more to turn them green).

You’re now well on your way to creating a strong web of connectedness between your entire online presence. Remember, Google counts every interlink as a “vote” for that page, increasing your results when someone searches for your name. So check back often until your whole spreadsheet is complete. Then you can, in one quick look, be sure that you’re doing everything you can to improve your online visibility.

Next: 5 Tips to Rank Highly on Google and Increase Your Visibility Online >

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