Have you Googled your name recently? While self-searching might seem a little narcissistic, it is becoming a vital practice in managing your personal brand and cleaning up your online reputation.

Managing your online reputation is becoming more and more important, whether you like it or not. Penelope Trunk writes that you do not have to quit your day job to pursue a career in art. To help maintain or obtain that day job, let’s look at some of the things you can do right now to start cleaning up your digital dirt.

1. Start by Googling Yourself

If your employers are going to be googling you, then you should know what they are going to see. This preliminary search will give you an idea of where you stand with your online identity. Is there a lot of embarrassing stuff out there about you? Is there nothing out there about you (this is an equally important problem that I will discuss later)? Set up a Google Alert that will let you know every time a new search result appears with your name.

2. Make a list of your online profiles

Compile a comprehensive list of all your profiles on social networking sites and any other profiles that might come up in a search for your name. The object of managing your personal brand online is not becoming invisible, but rather controlling what future business contacts, employers, and colleagues will see. For profiles and accounts that you do not want to show up in search results, simply use an ambiguous display name and avatar. Use Google to remind yourself of profiles you might have that you forgot about.

3. Clean up your “Big Three”

If hiring managers are looking on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, then you definitely want to be visible in those places.

Being on these sites can give you a leg up against the competition, but only if you are conscious and cautious of the material posted. When considering any social network, keeping in mind that privacy is a precaution, not a solution. If content is online, then it is accessible one way or another.

So let’s talk Twitter.  Twitter is a free micro-blogging tool that allows you to create messages of 140-characters or less.  It is a great tool for community building, self-promotion (yes those are two different things), and actively engaging fans in your brand.

1. Broadcast promotional material.

Twitter was not created as a Press Release System.  Some users employ twitter as a tool for one-way broadcasting.  Please don’t do this.  Social media is about creating a relationship with your community.  I want to connect to you, not promo tweets written by your marketing team.

Interact with people on Twitter that are interested in you, your product, or your field.  Use @ replies and Retweets to build relationships.  People often wonder “why is no one tweeting me?” or “why isn’t anyone writing on my wall?”  The answer is almost always because you haven’t invited them to.  Ask a question.  You’ll be amazed.  No one is going to interact with you without being invited to, unless your audience is 13-year-old-girls… and you are the Jonas Brothers.

2. Use a username with “gurl”, “hot”, “boi” or any variation thereof.

This isn’t your AIM screen name from high school, so resist the temptation of a “prettypony6794” or “monkeysRcrazy4242”.  Be consistent with your brand and choose something that people will easily identify as you.  You can change your display name in Settings without creating a new account. (acceptable options: your name, band, gallery, company, etc.)

Internet rural (Credit: Caliaetu on Flickr)

3. Only tweet at night.

Most artists work weird hours.  But keep in mind that a high percentage of Twitter users are on a 9-5 work schedule and that is when you are going to get the most visibility.  This doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything at night, but save a large percentage of your tweets for the day, when you will be most likely to elicit a response.

4. Tweetflooding.

Also known as spamming.  Your 30 tweets about The Real Housewives of New Jersey are unappreciated and unnecessary.  Overtweeting is a good way to get unfollowed.  Also, people are less likely to want to interact if you are overwhelming them.  Think before you post.  Exceptions: If you are live-blogging an event like a conference or breaking news story, it is acceptable to tweetflood as long as you use #hashtags.  Find out what hashtag other people are using and add it to your tweets to help connect with other people talking about the same thing.

5. Miss out on conversation.

I see this all the time and it kills me.  If someone is talking about you or something that you are knowledgable and passionate about, you should be right there in the conversation.

• Use Twellow to connect to other people in your industry.
• Set up alerts on Tweetbeep and Google Alerts so that you know whenever someone mentions you, your brand, or something you are interested in.
• Check out Tweetmeme for what links people are most talking about.

When I say “rapper”, what do you think of? Probably not a preteen girl spittin’ rhymes about how she isn’t ready for a boyfriend yet. This documentary might change that.

PStar (Credit: ewphoto on Flickr)

P*Star Rising is a documentary by Gabriel Noble that follows the growth (literally) of a 9-year-old female rapper from Harlem named Priscilla Diaz, stage name: P*Star. While I don’t know if I would have picked a name for a 9-year-old that produces google searches about the adult entertainment industry, I was instantly won over by this little girl’s wittiness and extremely apparent charisma. The film recently premiered at Tribeca Film Festival. Check out the trailer.

We can all learn a few things from P*Star, the artist, and Priscilla Diaz, the girl.

Connections make you or break you. P*Star wasn’t born rapping (although that would be pretty sick). She didn’t get signed by a record label because of her musical genius. She got signed because her father, an ex-rapper from the 80s, knew the right people.

While most of us aren’t lucky enough to be born into families with connections in the field of our choice, we can use social media to forge connections with people that will help advance our career. Start seeking out people on Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter that will provide you with an outlet for your work. Maybe it is a museum curator, or a record producer, or an employer. Join the communities that these people are part of and start a conversation. Make a connection by asking questions or establish yourself as competent by answering other people’s questions. The questions can lead to an email, the email to an interview or audition. Most successes don’t come from luck; they come from someone saying “Hey, I know this great person you should hear about.”

You can’t do it alone. There are going to be hard times. Really hard times. I don’t care how strong you are, you can’t believe that you are going to make it without some support system. Whether it is monetary or emotional support, you need someone that will always be stable, because there will be times when everything else is not.

Have an interesting story. The thing I like most about P*Star is that she has a story. She grew up in poverty with a heroine-addicted mother and cocaine-selling father. Her father cleaned up his act and took her in, teaching her how to rap. She had her first gig when she was 6, was signed to a record contract at 10, and now has a leading role on PBS’s revival of The Electric Company. Find some things, or a series of things that make people go, “Cool!”

Originally published on StillIndie.com