Not sure how to clean up your digital life?

After spending years online, your digital life can become quite messy, deserving of a footprint cleanup. We overshare to Facebook from parties, speak our minds too much on Twitter, collect endless emails, and drunk text. Occasionally, faux pas happen.

Luckily, there are specific steps you can take to look more professional digitally and move forward from the past.

Phone & Email Contacts

Although you never know when you might need to make contact with someone, I’ve found it refreshing to scrub my Microsoft Outlook contacts every once in a while of extra people listed. You can keep essential people, friends, and family, and then rid your contact list of anyone who has outdated information.

While you refresh your contacts, it’s also an excellent time to make sure you have a backup of your contact list, whether by saving to a Gmail or Microsoft Outlook service. Your phone can die or break at any time, and it’s no fun to lose the phone numbers and email addresses of those you’ve spent time collecting.

Social Media Photos & Posts

Cleaning up old posts and photos can help you brighten and shine your usual online persona, allowing you room to continue to grow and evolve as a person. We all grow older and change, and not every photo needs to be archived for the public to peruse.

Free expression is a beautiful thing, but sometimes we also share too much. When going through old photos on social media sites and looking for posts to archive or delete, I ask myself:

  • Is the post too provocative?
  • Does the post make me look unprofessional?
  • Does the post adequately capture how I want to be perceived?
  • Is the post outdated and irrelevant?

There have been times when I’ve shared something overly inappropriate on Twitter or shared something to Facebook that may have been better suited to Instagram, and it’s okay to delete and adjust as you go. I’m a fan of a provocative post, but maintaining a balance and knowing your audience is key to ensuring you don’t alienate anyone who feels uncomfortable with your imagery or language.

Additionally, I tend to delete any Twitter posts older than a year old, so I’m not blindsided by the return of thoughtless comments I may have made in years past.

Explore Your Name on Search Engines

Using Google and Bing, search for your name on the most notable search engines and browse the results.

Sometimes, without our knowledge, a search engine listing may be associated with your name that isn’t related, or top results won’t point to desired locations. The first step to combatting any lousy press or unwanted listings is to have full awareness. Then, you can put together a communications plan to address any problems have may be outstanding.

It’s also helpful to search for your name with images as the results delivered so you can comb through any photos associated with your full name.

Clean Out Your Text & Email Inboxes

Due to high volume, I keep a pretty stringent email inbox. Anything that doesn’t need responding to is deleted immediately after pulling pertinent info, and emails of importance and receipts are sent to the archives folder.

Using this method, I can bring my email inbox to zero each day and use a similar approach with texts to cut down on clutter and unanswered messages.

Uninstall Unwanted Computer Programs

When you clean up your digital life, it’s also helpful to clean up your digital tools at the same time, which includes your mobile phone and any tablets and computers.

Routinely, delete unused and unwanted programs from your computers and laptops, scan for viruses and malware, and install the latest updates. In doing so, you’ll keep your computer running faster, smoother, and operating in a more secure environment.

Clean Up Your Digital Life On the Daily

Spend time cleaning up the clutter contained on your online social profiles, in your phone and computer a little bit daily, and you’ll keep a firm handle on all things related to you digitally.

All in all, remember that anything you share online could be captured and saved by someone else indefinitely, even if you choose to delete the content eventually, so share carefully.

Privacy is often only an illusion, so don’t share what you don’t want people to see, even if behind a password gate or only shared with close friends.