After scouring through lots of pages of “social media top tips” and “how to get a killer LinkedIn profile”, the take home message about managing your professional profile online is: be savvy about balancing professional and personal uses of social media.
The careers service recommends this article to our graduates: Social networking and graduate recruitment: manage your online reputation which advises:
“Separate your personal and professional online personas and actively manage your ‘net rep’.”
So a good place to start, is to think about your target audience and the purpose of your profile. You can then tailor your tone and manage who can view your stuff accordingly.
Checking your digital footprint.
What does your current online profile actually look like? To find out, have a go at checking your digital footprint.
Start by googling your name, or your name and job title, and see what comes up. Is there anything there that you didn’t expect? Or that you wouldn’t want as part of your professional profile?
If you would like to find out more about your digital footprint, there is a great activity in the Cyber Security free online course: Find out about your digital footprint.
Updating your university web profile
You can manage your university web profile via My Impact.
Here you can add:
- a profile photo
- contact details
- publications
- research information
- teaching information
Your profile is then linked to your listing on the uni people search.
This document gives a step by step guide for updating all sections of your profile: MyImpact User Guide To Editing your Web Profile
If you like, you can also add a link to the personal blog that you created in our first 23 Things post, by clicking “Edit Personal Details” and adding a personal website address.
As Facebook privacy settings change quite frequently, it is a good idea to check what your profile looks like to the public or to a specific person.
Who can see what information on my profile?
Go to your profile page and then the “View Activity Log” drop down menu and “View As..”
Not what you expected?? Time to check your privacy settings!
Changing privacy settings
You can change who can view all of your future posts in “Who can view my stuff?”. If you do not want your Facebook profile to appear in search engine results you can stop this happening by clicking “See More Settings” and “Who can look me up”:
Now how about a few top tips to improve and manage your LinkedIn profile:
Use a professional profile photo!
Make sure you choose a professional photograph, that is current and sets the tone for your profile. Its probably best not to use a photo of you down the pub, on the beach or posing with giant cardboard teeth!
Control who can see your information by customising your public profile.
Go to your profile and click “Update your public profile settings”:
You can then select exactly which sections can be seen publicly:
Customise your personal url:
Make it easier for the right people to find you by personalising your url. Again in your public profile settings, you can edit the link to your profile:
Turning off your activity broadcast
If you haven’t updated your LinkedIn Profile in a while and it needs a major overhaul, you can turn off your activity broadcast so you can quietly update it without notifying everyone in your network!
This can be done from your profile page:
There are hundreds of articles out there about how to have an amazing professional Twitter profile, and most of them suggest the following top tips:
- Make use of your bio section and include key words to help you network with relevant people.
- Link to your blog or website.
- Have a professional twitter handle.
- Do not link to your Facebook account if you use them for different purposes/to reach different audiences.
- Separate professional and personal! If you have a twitter account which you use as part of your professional profile, that network might not want to see you #GBBO retweets!
(Ellie masquerading as Nuala!)