For most of you, spring is in the air. Typically in the U.S. that means spring cleaning – a time to get rid of old clothes, clean out that junk drawer, dust every nook and corner, and eliminate this past year’s clutter. What we often forget to purge is our online media. I’m constantly reading tech blogs, websites, listening to webinars and watching presentations on the latest and greatest in social media. With the amount of information out there this could be a full-time job Companies and individuals are creating new apps, sites, and platforms that are the “most cutting edge” to stay on the cusp of innovation and to get the most of their minute of fame. As a result, we are bombarded with an abundance of information to look at and choose from. If you’re like me, you’ll hear about that cutting edge site, sign-up right away, (try) to be that trend-setter, and then never use it.
The overload of info floating around got me thinking on this topic of de-cluttering our social use. Is the Myspace account I created in 2000 still useful? Not right now it isn’t; and to be quite frank it’s just another site that uses my name. I recently found an article about a user whose profile (or social page) was hijacked and didn’t know it because they hadn’t used that site in years! This just opens you up for more identify theft if you’re not aware.
So, I’ve put together a few ideas when adding to that 2012 spring cleaning list. Write down: “De-clutter my social sites, profiles and other online media”.
Here are some tips:
- Be aware of the social media websites that you have signed up for – Keep a log of the URLs, usernames and passwords. Re-visit these sites every couple of months to make sure they A)still exist B)don’t have any posts from followers that you don’t agree with C)haven’t been hijacked by a hacker.
- If you’ve been sitting on a site for years (ahem Mypace) consider changing the password just in case the profile has been hijacked.
- Do you receive pesky SPAM emails from that one time you contributed to an online community or a professional association portal? Don’t just delete the email, unsubscribe to the emails and never receive them again. At the bottom of your email will be an option to unsubscribe or change your contact information. Not every company offers this although it’s standard practice.
- Understand what sites you use and why you use them. Do you use Facebook personally, LinkedIn for networking, Twitter for the latest news and Google+ for business?. Determine a strategy, look at the other sites you belong to and decide how they fit into your social life. If it’s too much, cancel your account.
- All those apps on your phone take up room, room that you could use for an extra song, extra photo or for faster speed. Take a look at those apps and delete what you don’t use.
- Update your profiles. Take an audit of the top sites that you’ve been using. Have you updated your information? There is a lot on these sites that needs constant updating, including: address change, email change, job promotion, working for a new company, changes in family, relationships, and so much more. Updating this information makes you more relevant to those you are connecting with online.
- If you have a Flickr account or any other photo account, make sure you’ve updated it. This means not only add photos you’ve taken the past few months, but also review the old ones and get rid of duplicates to get more storage space. This applies to music as well.
- If you sign up for of promotions, subscriptions, or do a lot of online shopping, would consider opening a SPAM email account. Email setup is free for Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo accounts. Set something up (like piperlikesretail@hotmail.com) that will serve for those times you have to provide an email but don’t want to use your personal email. This will reduce the amount of SPAM email that you have to see on a daily basis. You will need to audit your new account every once in a while, but your personal account will be clutter free and you won’t miss that one email from your friend because you deleted it with the other 100 SPAM emails received.
- I personally have more than 30 passwords that I use for online banking, email, social media, shopping, and work. It becomes impossible to remember these and thus I’m constantly forgetting my password and resetting it online. Consider coming up with 5 passwords. Typically some sites require a number, some require caps, or some a certain length. Come up with 5 passwords that are similar, e.g. social1, Social1, Social1!, socialmedia1! you get my point. The key is to stick to a consistent password. Please DO NOT use anything with your name and your birthday. This is a dead giveaway for hackers. Once you’ve audited all of your profiles, update with your new password so that you A) know what the password is B) stick to a consistent layout so the guessing is much easier if/when you forget.
- Make sure that all your computer equipment is up-to-date and running smoothly. Install any updates and clear your cache.
