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The end of the year is drawing near, which means it's time for fresh starts and new beginnings. While that does apply to whichever New Year's resolution you plan to make in 2016 (and, in all likelihood, abandon by February), it applies to social media sites as well. Here are a few ways you can give your online presence a New Year's boost:
Unfriend and Unfollow
The new year is the perfect time to go through your friends list with a fine-toothed comb. Here's a quick guide for whether you should be friends with someone online: Do you know who this person is? Have you seen him or her in the last year? Do you honestly think you'll need to talk to him or her in the future? If the answer to all of those questions is "no," unfriend that person.
You should also take a look at who you're following on Twitter and similar sites. Unfollow any accounts you started following on a whim, or whose tweets you always rapidly scroll past when they come up. These accounts are just cluttering your feed--cut it down so you're just seeing the important stuff.
Delete Unsavory Pictures
Even if you don't personally post photos of yourself playing beer pong, you should still go through the pictures you're tagged in online and make sure there's nothing unflattering. If you have the power to delete those pictures, do so--on the other hand, if a close friend has posted them, reach out and ask him or her to take the photos down.
If you can't get them deleted, at least untag yourself. The more you can do to prevent future and current employers from seeing those pics of you partying a little too hard or sobbing over how beautiful your friend's dog is, the better.
Update Information
A lot can happen in a year, and there's a decent chance that some of the information on your social media accounts is out of date. Take a look at your location and contact info to ensure that it's still accurate. Even if you don't think anything has changed, it's worth double checking.
This is doubly true for sites like LinkedIn. Make sure any professional pages you have include all of your information in case a potential employer wants to reach out to you. This is also a great time to give your LinkedIn summary and job descriptions a boost. If you haven't touched these sections since your last job search, they could almost certainly use some revising.
Google Yourself
What happens when you plug your name into a search engine? Give it a go and see what you find. If your name is super common, there's a chance you don't come up at all. There are good and bad things about being a search-engine ghost: On one hand, potential employers can't find anything bad about you. The flip side, however, is that they can't find anything good, either.
If you do come up, take a look at what the results say about you. Are they professional and appropriate? Does the page contain links to dead or abandoned pages? Although you won't be able to change these overnight, the first step toward having a good search results page is knowing where you're starting.
Think SEO
Now that you know what does come up when you search for yourself online, think about what you wish came up. Use search engine optimization techniques to make sure your professional websites and LinkedIn page come up first. You can boost your rankings by using your full name in your summary and throughout the copy of your Web pages.
You can also give your pages an SEO boost by thinking of keywords associated with your field or position. Using these keywords on your sites will make it easier for people to find you when they're looking for, say, "Guinea Pig Wranglers" (or whatever you do for a living).
