What to do hey? Like most people I instantly panic… with a question in my head “what will they see?” Then I pray they don’t click on that link from 10 years ago with the body paint that’s completely irrelevant to my life now. But it’s my life. My history. I actually quite like the picture anyway! Ha!

I would simply like them to see the person I am today. So, I constantly re-profile.

Google: Charlie-Helen Robinson

You’ll be pleased to know the picture from 10 years ago is now truly buried…

When I get asked questions like “how do I clear my social media history on Google?“, I respond “You can’t easily, and that’s OK because its you. However, you can, slowly, organically start to see a change in results.“

 

Organic Re-Profiling.

Reconfiguring your historical Google results organically.

Yes, there are probably lots of fancy technical ways a person can clear historical search results… but for the general everyday person who has pounded the pavement a few too many times on their social media profile, and who now has a history on Google that perhaps doesn’t reflect the person they are today, re-profiling organically is the best way.

It’s something I, Charlie, realised a few years back and took the conscious journey to amend my results. Yes, I have a lot still there – but it is slowly being replaced and updated, reflecting me as a person better aligned to “me these days”. We all have a youth. Mine just wasn’t a childhood on social media – it was a childlike fascination with social media (think “oversharing”).

Similar to how we can rebrand ourselves from “single party girl” to “working mother of two” or “social wine group owner” to “corporate communications professional”; online gives us the ability to showcase the snap shot of our life we wish to highlight more prominently, to our business benefit. Therefore, why not use it?

How though? How do you go about re-profiling yourself to get better Google results, without using technical gizmo’s and geeks?

Read on. With the famous words “it won’t happen over night… but it will happen” in the back of your mind.

Re-Profile by following 5 Simple Steps:

1) Search for yourself. Google. Don’t just use your standard name search, try searching for yourself as a person looking for your type of business skill. What’s there? Anything? Anything cringeworthy? Review images, content and general information. Ask your friends to. Get a screen shot of what they see.

Tip: Also review all social media platforms that come up for images ie Facebook friends and what they have tagged you in.

2) Target the junk. Delete what you can manually yourself – images, blogs, notes, old posts. Some images or posts may need to be requested by friends to have removed (eg images tagged you don’t like). If it is a third party service, you can close accounts or request they delete your image etc – but this takes a lot longer and is more complicated. Worth it, if it really bothers you. Persistence pays in this area. Keep going.

Tip: The memories service by Facebook is great for surfacing old content worthy of a swift delete.

3) Start the shift: Once you are happier with the historical data remaining, select a few social media platforms you are happy to invest your time in. This may need a think about your overall public brand. By staying true to your public profile, using a targeted set of social media platforms, you will see organic results quicker than by a scattered approach.

Tip: Your blog gives you the base from which to share to other platforms – including LinkedIn. Instagram works in a similar way – you can share to both Facebook and Twitter at the same time.

4) Stay on track; Use consistent keywords or share articles aligned to your preferred profile. What? Remember we talked about getting into the search engines by constantly talking about similar subjects and topics? Read the article here.

5) Create content constantly: It’s called work. Work it baby. Post something every day. Keep going. Then, start from #1 again and keep doing the steps until your satisfied.

Tip: Try the Think Work Play Strategy: /2014/02/25/think-work-play-10-minutes-a-day/

BONUS TIP; Simple Profile Strategy for Business

Create an image on your Instagram (which you can share to Facebook). Write a blog (content), share the blog to LinkedIn. Let your LinkedIn feed it to Twitter. Manually share onto Google+ with a quote that includes 2 or 3 of your keywords (that’s 6 Social Media Platforms).

Of course, if you have NO PROFILE ON GOOGLE, this strategy also works to get you one.

Happy re-profiling!!

If you want to delete search histories, that’s different but you can get help from Google for this here: //support.google.com/