Today in my last class of the semester, a guest lecturer came and talked to us about our resumes and job interviews, and things of that sort.  She started a little bit about the impact our Facebook page has in that kind of thing.  So I started thinking, what does my Facebook page say about me?  What does your page say about you?  What kinds of things do you want it to say about you?

Here are a few pointers she gave (and that I am adding through my “expertise”) to help clean up your Facebook page and clear your name!

• If you are tagged in a photo that is provocative or sexual, untag it.  Better yet, if you are tagged in a photo, people can typically view the rest of the pictures in that album too. If there is anything in the entire album that can be misconstrued, untag yourself from the album itself.  Or go to your settings and block people you are concerned about seeing it from seeing photos you are tagged it.
• Remove friends that could ruin your image.  If there is someone who posts on your wall and curses, talks about some party you went to, etc., then you have a few options: (1) Tell them to not post in that tone or talk about that bad thing you did on your wall. (2) Delete them as a friend. (3) Go to your settings and make it so that they can’t post on your wall period. (4) Go to your settings and make it so that the people you are concerned about reading it can’t read posts by other friends on your wall. This setting doesn’t prevent them from seeing their comments on your statuses.  (5) Block posts from friends on your wall. (6) Block your wall completely so that you basically don’t even have one.  I just deleted 300 friends recently, and many were for this reason.  I got in trouble once with a parent of a church because someone posted a joke about Viagra on my page.  I thought the joke was hilarious, but it hurt my rapport with the parent and that summer interning was miserable afterwards.
• Remove pages you are a “fan” of that could hurt too. If that means music that could hurt your reputation, that might mean you have to delete it. Use discretion.  This goes for groups too. If I click on a group and there’s a bunch of cursing on it, I might think poorly of you.
• What are your quotes listed?  Are any of them suggestive? They might be funny to you, but it won’t be funny when you get in trouble for them.
• If you are really that worried about your page, make it so that no one can view anything on your page–pictures, posts, interests, etc. Then your page serves as a place where people can message you, like email, and where you can stalk other people.