It’s that time of year again. With the warm spring weather comes the feeling of wanting to frantically clean our homes inside and out. But have you ever stopped to consider that we should be cleaning up our online presence, too? In today’s post, I’m sharing 5 ways you can ‘spring clean’ your social media platforms.
1. Purge your friends lists.
Take a look at who you’re following on your socials and evaluate each and every single person on your list. Have you communicated with them at all in the past couple of years? Does seeing their posts make you happy, or does their content give you feelings of stress? If you constantly compare yourself to someone else online, it may be a good idea to remove them completely from your friends list or select the option on the appropriate platform to stop seeing their posts in your feed. The latter option eliminates the uncomfortable feeling many have of unfriending people online.
2. Ask yourself if you’re representing your personal brand.
Similar to my first point, be sure to check all pages you are following or groups you are a member of. Are these groups you actively have meaningful discussions with? Are you still as passionate about the content posted to these platforms as you were 5 years ago when you first started following? If not, leave the group or unlike the page.
3. Check your privacy settings on Facebook.
Who do you really want seeing your content? Do you want to be searchable by your phone number? Do you want to allow just anyone to send you a message? Go through your privacy settings and see what they’re currently set to and decide what works best for you.
4. Untag your photos.
Are there photos from your college days that you don’t want the world to see? Go through your tagged photos and remove yourself from anything unflattering. This is especially important for job seekers since many employers conduct a social media search during the hiring process. To really add another layer of protection, turn on “Tag Review” in your settings. This will prompt you to approve or reject future posts that you are tagged in.
5. Re-evaluate which platforms you’re using.
The whole point of social media is to share current, relevant content. If you hardly ever use a certain platform, consider deleting it!
6. What does your profile really say about you?
What do you want your personal brand to be? Check your biography on all platforms. Is it relevant? Does it speak to who you are? Does your personal information need to be displayed on your Facebook profile? If you use LinkedIn, be sure to update your employment experience, achievements, and skills on a regular basis in order to accurately represent you.
The A Dot 