Here’s how it works…

When you look at two or three status updates on your social media profile, they may tell one story, but when you look at all of them in a timeline, they may paint a completely different picture. Are you an over-sharer, whiner, arguer, boundary-crosser, or one-upper person when posting online? What’s your personality? Are you open, creative, inventive, logical or easy going?

Curious to know if the image I’d like to project was aligned with the one I was actually projecting, I tested the following links and found FiveLabs fun (you all passed with flying colors), MyLife and Spokio dished more but required a fee to unlock a deeper dive, and my email address alone had Google bringing up page upon page of past blog posts.

[pullquote width=”300″ float=”left”]What will you discover about you?[/pullquote]

FiveLabs: Enter the link to your Facebook profile on this site and Five Labs will analyse the language of your posts to predict personality, and it is surprisingly accurate. Based on modern psychology, Five Labs ranks you on five personality traits – agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, extroversion and openness. Their methodology is based on the world’s largest language and personality study, conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.

MyLife: Searches the internet to find all your public profiles, then presents the uncovered information. Some info may be sensitive in nature, and not the type you may want a prospective employer to see. For the paid version, you have more options such as viewing the online records the service found, who’s been searching for you on Google, and much more. As well, it removes sensitive information for you if you have their paid version of the service.

Spokeo: This is a people search engine that scours the internet, aggregating data from many online and offline sources. A Spokeo search returns phone numbers, address, email and photos. US only at this time though the site revealed a surprising amount of information on my profiles but again required a fee to unlock.

Google: Most of us know we should search our name on the search engine, but have you ever searched your phone number and email address to see what comes up? You might be surprised by what you see.

Image: From James Minchin’s behind the scenes photos of Mad Men – www.thefoxisback.com

Extract from Career + Work Blog | Right Management
‘Cleaning your Digital Footprint in Preparation for a Job Search’
Posted: 25 Sep 2014 (US)

Would my offhand response to that political hot potato negatively reframe me in the eyes of others? Would that angry, revengeful diatribe about the cad/cow I’ve just broken up with call into question my integrity/sobriety/sanity? And how would I feel if the CIA, my boss, potential employer, Nana or the media saw my post? One, two, five years from now?

‘What goes on the road stays on the road’…and YouTube and Vimeo and Reddit and…

Yes, critical indeed that we carefully manage and protect our online personal brand. But what if someone deliberately set out to damage our brand image?

Recently met an extremely influential high flier who had Google searched herself and found, immediately below the link to her LinkedIn profile, a savagely titled link leading to an unnecessarily vitriolic essay written about her by an individual (read ‘troll’) hell bent on damaging her reputation. She needed a solution STAT!

Here’s what we recommended:

1) Call the offending site’s administrator and ask if they would kindly remove the article (just as professional ‘digital dirt’ cleaning companies would do). At the very least, remove the offending title.

2) Simultaneously (particularly if the administrator is unwilling to act), create a YouTube account, record and upload quality subject matter expertise video presentations and share links widely. As YouTube is the second largest search engine (though not strictly a search engine) to Google, the more viewings the higher the links should rise above that of the offending article.

3) Generate additional ‘positive press’ to push the offending link even further down Google home page by:

– Developing a dedicated personal Webpage using Workfolio or similar, supported by a dedicated URL then share the link on LinkedIn, Google+ and other relevant social media sites

– Creating additional social media profiles including Twitter, Facebook Page, Pinterest and Instagram and consistently posting/sharing quality content

– Establishing a blog on interests and/or subject matter expertise and posting consistently using SEO (search engine optimization) plugins to spread content across all relevant social media forums

– Utilising social media management tools such as HootSuite to schedule regular quality posts for delivery at premium, site specific, viewing times on all platforms, including LinkedIn

– Ensuring all shared articles and images are titled, well structured for SEO, hashtags well placed and headlines sharp and concise for easy searching

4) If links to other social profiles are also in the offending article (as in this case), change the URL’s of those accounts so that the links become void

5) When all else fails, yes there are many companies who specialise in cleaning up such dirt, though despite a fee being involved, success may not be guaranteed.

Given such situations will increase in prevalence over time, keen to hear your thoughts. Any hints to share?

[pullquote width=”300″ float=”left”]But why? What does this digital business involve?[/pullquote]

It involves dedicated webpages replacing traditional resumes; LinkedIn membership volume and currency replacing Rolodexes; WhatsApp and other messaging apps replacing phone pickup; Google+ and Google Apps replacing megabyte file sharing email congestion; global file access via Cloud storage replacing frantic midnight calls to irritated home based PA’s; MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) a veritable smorgasbord of educational opportunity developed by esteemed Universities, now accessible via our digital fingertips. The list is endless…and all tethered with the smart technology in our pockets.

Given this, we need to understand, climb on board and embrace – for how better to be found, to be seen, to promote our capability and expertise, to connect, to maintain continuous learning? LinkedIn for instance – what better platform to garner headhunter attention, job offers, new clients, fresh contract opportunities, broader networks, or tap into the vast networks of group and thought leader knowledge sharing?

[pullquote width=”300″ float=”left”]But how do you find time to maintain all this stuff?[/pullquote]

Building an online presence can sound like a whole lot of work and no matter how important we know it is, who wants to spend several hours a day tweaking their profiles, finding interesting stuff to share, considering group conversations to weigh in on, carefully narrowing a Tweet message to just 140 characters?

‘Ain’t nobody got time for dat!’

It’s a question of making time. And I do. Average 10 minutes over my morning coffee. Seriously, I’ve often queued longer for that coffee! Substantiating my claim, LinkedIn recently asked personal branding guru William Arruda how much time we should dedicate to putting ourselves out there every day. A spot of research later and he declared that nine was the magic number.

Nine. Nine minutes. Just nine minutes!! I like this man.

Devoting just nine minutes to your career and professional goals a day and your less likely to get overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of online brand management. Easy to get sidetracked when you’re aiming to spend an hour, or even 30 minutes promoting yourself, less so when you select just one task to boost your career every day. The more attainable the goal, the increased likelihood of actually doing it.

Here are nine ‘quickies’ to get you started:

•Share an interesting article on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ or other personally selected professional sites
• Send a quick email to a contact you haven’t talked to in a while
• Join a LinkedIn group of interest and share an opinion
• Perfect your LinkedIn profile summary
• Connect with two or three people on LinkedIn, Google+ or other professional sites
• Endorse one or two valued connections
• Write a brief recommendation for a LinkedIn connection you particularly respect
• Scan Twitter headlines and share interesting commentary
• Google features/benefits of other social media platforms that may suit your personal branding requirements (at the same time deepening your understanding of the digital future).

Choose a time of day – maybe the first or last nine minutes of your workday, or the nine minutes you’re actually standing in that coffee queue (smart phone access right?) or in place of that fast food forage during the afternoon slump, or the nine minutes your were about to spend on Pinterest, Instagram or Facebook – and dedicate those minutes to doing something that will reap long term rewards for your career and personal brand.

Your thoughts? Have you a personal branding strategy you like to share?