You may not realize it, but your social media profiles reveal a lot about you. If we have to be honest, they reveal too much. There is nothing wrong about that, if you are using them to connect only with your closest friends. However, most people add friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues and etc. to their social contacts. In addition, many social websites offer access to users’ profiles, their information and preferences through search engines and tricky privacy policies. That means that everyone can look you up and see what kind of a person you are… or you present yourself to be. That includes potential employers, romantic dates and even hackers. What you should remember is to use social media with cautiousness. Use social networks like brands do – to create a nice and friendly image of yourself. However, if the damage is already done and you have published content that is widely considered as inappropriate, you should not lose heart because there is hope. You can easily polish your online social image and protect yourself from future mistakes. Here are a few steps that will help you do that.
Review & Delete
This is the most time-consuming part of the polishing process. You will need to read through all your past posts on all of your social website profiles. Search for anything that may cross the lines and delete it. However, for some users this activity is quite fun since they go back to good memories and different periods in their lives. Try to think of this activity in that way and you may actually enjoy reviewing your content.
Email Separation
Social media is no longer used only as a personal tool. Many people create separate social profiles for work and business. This is a useful practice that will help you keep your personal life away from your job and vice versa. However, many business users forget to include different email addresses for each of their profiles. Some of them use their personal email in their business account or add their work email to their private social media profiles. That does not make sense and it will only result in mixing your private and work emails. As you can imagine, this can lead to a big confusions.
Fix the Settings
You need to review your privacy settings. Otherwise, you may end up sharing information not only with the people you have added, but with the entire world. Social websites can block all intruders from seeing your preferences, posts or your whole profile. However, in most cases, when you create an account in some of these networks, your settings are selected by default. Therefore, you need to check whether your content is locked and safe. In addition, review your privacy and sharing settings every few months. Some social sites have the habit of changing privacy terms without informing their users.
Impose Limits
One of toughest things to control on social networks is your friends’ post of you. Ironically, they are often the #1 source of image tarnishing. To avoid unpleasant surprises and unwanted sharing, again you need to change some of your profile settings. For example, in Facebook, you can allow tagging only after you have reviewed a post. Unfortunately, not all social websites offer this option. Therefore, you need to subscribe to an email service like Google Alert, for instance. It will send you messages whenever someone publishes a picture, video or any kind of content that includes you.
