shannonboudjema.com

Your digital footprint represents you personally and professionally whether you intend it to or not. It’s too easy these days for people to get the inside scoop on you – whether they are thinking of dating you, hiring you or looking at your uni application – people will do a search on you and make a judgement based on what they find.

www.pipl.com is one of many serach engines used to get a better glimpse of someone. Punch your name in to see what it has on you. First Last and FirstLast versions of your name should be searched.

So what happens if the search of your name reveals some not so good things? As of today, there is no guarantee you can ever rid yourself of it… but here’s what you can try:

1. Contact the web adminsitrator of the site that contains the information of you. Ask them to remove it.

2. Mitigate – or bury it! You can easily do this by getting active online in ways that will improve your personal brand. Open an account with linkedin, twitter, start a blog, comment <intelligently> on other people’s blogs. Remember to ensure you maintain these sites at least once a week to keep your digital footprint looking healthy.

Apr 28th by Shannon

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So I’m speaking tomorrow at Camp Enterprise. I get to talk to 50 odd 16yr olds about SM. I have been asking myself… why would they care. How is this relevant to them. What value can I bring to the table.

Gen Y has never known life without the internet. Is it probable that SM will be like iTunes to them? Will this be anything new to them at all? Will they be rolling their eyes because they already get it? Possibly.

But do they know how to leverage this to further their careers? Do they know how this could devastate them if they choose to distribute private info about themselves, visuals that surpass the PG13 tag? Probably not.

So… Although they probably don’t need as much of a debrief on the SM basics… it’s probab ly going to be helpful for them to understand the power behind it. The good and the bad.

<cool. just needed to talk that out for me more than you really>

Just for a laugh… try punching your name into www.pipl.com and see what comes up. I don’t know why… but I still find this a little scary. Digital footprints are a force to be reckoned with. Monitoring yours is imperative. Knowing how to mitigate the less savory stuff on you is priceless.

Apr 17th by Shannon

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