How to take control of your digital footprint

All the digital traces (blogs, photos, videos, tweets, posts, forums, article comments, etc.) that we leave on the internet and social media, whether or not we are the authors, could one day turn against us, sometimes with dramatic consequences for our professional or even personal lives. These 5 steps will help us take control of and protect our online reputation.

With the growth of social media, no one is safe from a “poorly managed” digital trace resurfacing a few years later. More and more people, “public or not,” get caught out every day (examples in images below) by digital traces that later prove to be negative, with consequences such as: job loss, divorce, lawsuits, etc. And especially the youngest among us, teenagers, who are particularly exposed. It’s up to us as parents to make them aware of the consequences of these digital traces for their future careers!

1- Check what Google says about you

Since Google accounts for 91% of internet searches in France, all you have to do is type your first and last name into the search engine (preferably by opening a new window in private browsing) to discover the answers to these two questions:

• are you clearly present on the first page of Google? If so, that’s great for your visibility. At least those who search for you will find you easily. If not, it may be that one or more namesakes have taken your place, in which case you need to dig deeper into the 2nd or even 3rd page of Google to be found. The further we are from the first page, the more actions we’ll have to take to make ourselves visible. Because the first Google page is crucial!
• is all the information favorable to us? We are the only judges. Since Google pages are updated constantly, an old trace can appear at any moment. It is therefore strongly recommended to set up permanent monitoring of your Google page.

2 – Take control of your presence on the internet

Any activity on the web generates traces. Some are deliberate and necessary. Others are involuntary and completely beyond the internet user’s control. Yet it is their combination that makes up each person’s digital identity: the article or comment posted on a blog, the review left on a commercial site, an online résumé, a carpooling route left on a specialized site, participation in a Facebook event… Everything we publish on the web can be seen and viewed, whether by a recruiter, a colleague or a loved one. Everything we save (text, image, sound) on any site whatsoever is our responsibility. That’s why, before publishing any information or comment, it’s important to ask ourselves these two questions about the usefulness of the information:

• what does this show about us?
• does it help develop our image, our personal brand, our Personal Branding?

3 – Take control of your presence on social media

Social media isn’t as “private” as we might think: a large amount of data published on Facebook or Twitter, for example, can appear on other websites — that’s a reality. That’s why it’s important to:

• think as far in advance as possible about the information (text, videos and photos) that we share on our various Facebook, LinkedIn, Viadeo profiles, etc. “If there’s something about you that no one should know, maybe you shouldn’t be talking about it in the most visible place,” warned Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. So what image do we want to give of ourselves?
• don’t post photos or videos of overly alcohol-fueled private parties…
• don’t make statements that could turn against us…

What’s more, any participation in Web 2.0 can generate the creation of information in our name: a dedicated web profile when we sign up on Badoo, a special page on a third-party website when we take part in a Facebook event, the display of our tweet on several dedicated websites, etc. The private and public spheres only exist to a certain degree on the internet: we don’t know how the data we create is managed.

4 – Deal with harmful digital traces

None of the digital traces left on the internet and social media will ever disappear. Nevertheless, we can make them less visible by using the online reputation dashboard to:

• measure the extent of the negative results
• discover our online reputation score (a score out of 100).
• improve our Google page
• protect our Google page
• and optimize our positive results or create new ones…

The goal will be to push the negative results as far back as possible by bringing the positive results up to the first page. Other popular solutions: using pseudonyms, or even making your private profiles confidential (Facebook, Twitter…).

5 – Protect your Google page

“The best defense is a good offense,” as we often hear in the sports world. For online reputation, it’s the same thing: the best protection is the action of protecting the first Google page, making sure that no information comes along to destroy our image. All you have to do is make good use of the online reputation dashboard and let it guide you.