Send Your Social Profile to Rehab: 5 Tactics for Cleaning It Up

Cleaning up all of your social media profiles can go a long way and help improve your overall image. The biggest reason to make sure your profiles are clean is that customers research companies (and people) on the internet first — and you don’t want them finding shoddy social media profiles that are less than professional.

Here are five tactics to help you clean up your social media profiles.

1. Untag

Untag yourself from photos and posts that are inappropriate or unprofessional, even if they are funny between friends. If the image or comment is damaging, you can even go so far as to ask the person who posted it to delete it. If they don’t want to delete it, then you can at least untag yourself and lessen the association.

2. Delete posts

Take time to go through the things you have posted and delete anything that seems irrelevant, unprofessional, or is just unnecessary to have on your social media profiles. This can help clear out the clutter in your profiles and prevent things showing up that you don’t want others to see. Think about what you may have posted about years ago before you were in the workforce — it’s almost guaranteed that there are posts you’ll want to delete from that time period.

3. Remove friends/connections

Maybe you don’t have anything unprofessional or inappropriate on your profile, but you could have friends or connections on social media who do. Sift through your friends and connections and remove anyone you don’t know or who posts things you wouldn’t want people associating you with.

4. Post content

A great way to clean up your social profile is to fill it with updated and relevant content that you want to share with your audience. If you are deleting a lot of content, make sure you are replacing it with new and fresh material. Don’t share overly personal content and try not to overshare by flooding your news feed and timeline with post after post.

5. Perform a Google search

Put your first and last name in quotation marks into the Google search bar and see what pops up. Try different variations, including your name + the town/city in which you live, or your name + your company name. Are all of the results about you or does someone else with your name have information that surfaces? Are there any search results that are about you that could cast a negative light? These are things you want to know because it is not uncommon for people to search others in Google to find out more information about them.

Your online reputation matters both in your personal life and at work. Remember that once something is on the internet, it lives there forever — so be mindful of what you are putting out to the world and try to do your best to be as professional and objective as possible.