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Digital Presence Optimization

Introduction

It likely doesn’t surprise you that who you present yourself to be online can have a big impact on people’s impression of you. Whether a potential employer, collaborator, or audience member, what they find out about you from a Google search can paint their image of you in their head.

So, it’s important to know what the internet says about you.

Along with all of your publications, highlights, and articles, being aware of what other links may pop up when searching your name lets you act as a one-person PR team, cultivating your persona to new connections.

In a digital-first world, it can also be easy to be invisible when there’s no footprint at all, so understanding how to create and curate one is equally as important.

You gotta have something, and that something has gotta be good.

This section with help you transform your digital presence from an academic-only showcase into a strategic professional asset, while still maintaining your professional credibility by:

  1. Auditing what your online presence is like now
  2. Overhauling your LinkedIn (can be adapted to platform of choice)
  3. Using keyword optimization to show up on search results
  4. Understanding what ‘digital assets’ to create
  5. Creating ways to test if all of this is working

Exercise: Strategic Digital Presence Audit & Optimization

Exercise Components:

  1. Digital Footprint Audit Let’s find the baseline of our ‘Internet Identity’ from the beginning, by looking at what comes up in searches. This audit gives a clear picture of what we’re working with from the beginning.

      2. Steps to perform your audit:

    1. Search your name in an incognito/private browsing window
    2. Document all platforms where you appear in the first 3 pages of results
    3. Identify what kind of information and impression these results give and any misalignments with what you WANT presented.

      4. Then use this prompt with your chosen LLM:

      🤖

      I'm a PhD in [discipline] transitioning to [target career path]. I've conducted a digital footprint audit and found my presence on these platforms: [List your platforms: LinkedIn, ResearchGate, institutional profile, personal website, high school sports team, GitHub, etc.] For each platform, I'll describe the current content and focus. [Give summaries here]

      Please help me: 1. Assess alignment between my current digital presence and my target career path 2. Identify critical gaps in how my expertise is presented 3. Suggest platform-specific optimization priorities 4. Recommend which platform(s) should serve as my primary digital hub 5. Create a roadmap for optimizing my presence across platforms

  1. LinkedIn Profile Strategic Overhaul Optimize your LinkedIn profile (or other selected platform) which serves as your primary professional networking hub, emphasizing transferable skills and impact.

      2. Create a detailed plan for these key profile elements by copy/pasting them into a document you can paste/upload (or the relevant ones from your desired platform, and adapt accordingly):

    1. Headline
    2. About section
    3. Experience descriptions
    4. Skills section
    5. Recommendations

      6. Use this prompt with your chosen LLM, continuing the above thread:

      🤖

      I need to transform my LinkedIn profile from academic-focused to industry-attractive while maintaining my research credibility. Here's my current LinkedIn content for each section: [Paste current content] Please help me: 1. Craft a headline that emphasizes transferable skills rather than just my academic title 2. Reframe my about section to highlight problem-solving abilities and impact 3. Restructure experience descriptions to emphasize outcomes over methodologies 4. Identify 10-15 strategic keywords for my skills section based on target job descriptions 5. Suggest specific types of recommendations I should request to fill credibility gaps

  2. Search Optimization Strategy To go even further, we can start to use SEO optimization to make sure that our output shows up in common searches, with keywords meaningful to our relevant sector. These can then be implemented into the exercise from above, or used in future content.

      3. These keywords can be optimized to have your accomplishments be immediately recognized and understood by people in the space, and to help you summarize those accomplishments in clean and succinct language.

      Create a spreadsheet with these columns:

    1. Target Role/Position
    2. Top 10 Technical Keywords
    3. Top 10 Transferable Skill Keywords
    4. Key Accomplishment Phrases
    5. Implementation Locations (which platforms/sections)

      6. Then use this prompt with your chosen LLM:

      🤖

      I'm optimizing my digital presence for search visibility in [target industry]. Please help me: 1. Analyze these [5-7] job descriptions [specific roles you are targeting; these can be copy/pasted, uploaded as a doc, or linked through a search-enabled LLM] 2. Extract the most common technical skill and qualification keywords 3. Identify transferable skill language that appears frequently 4. Suggest specific accomplishment phrasings that incorporate these keywords naturally 5. Recommend optimal placement of these keywords across my LinkedIn profile, personal website, and other platforms

  3. Digital Asset Development Plan

      4. Here is where you can plan what you may need to focus on creating, to build relevancy for your specific field and platform. This is a long-term play to build a portfolio of work, but extremely beneficial.

      Here are some potential options for building digital assets, to round out your showcased abilities:

    1. Technical skill evidence (GitHub repositories, case studies)
    2. Communication ability demonstrations (slides, videos, blog posts)
    3. Collaboration indicators (project summaries, testimonials)
    4. Problem-solving showcases (challenge solutions, analytical examples)

      5. If you want to be very focused about it, you can use an LLM to help you plan what to create, with the following prompt:

      🤖

      Based on my career transition from [academic specialty] to [target industry], help me develop a digital asset plan that demonstrates my relevant expertise. For each of these categories, suggest 2-3 specific digital assets I should develop: 1. Technical skill evidence appropriate for my field 2. Communication ability demonstrations 3. Collaboration indicators 4. Problem-solving showcases For each suggested asset, please include: - Specific content focus - Platform for hosting/sharing - Development timeframe - Success metrics

  1. Engagement Analytics Setup

      2. If you want to implement measures to see if these actions are increasing your activity across searches, this is a method for creating analytics.

      Set up basic analytics to track:

    1. Profile view trends
    2. Content engagement patterns
    3. Connection growth in target sectors
    4. Search appearance keywords
    5. Inbound opportunity sources

      6. Use this prompt with your chosen LLM, continuing the above thread:

      🤖

      I want to measure the effectiveness of my digital presence optimization. Help me set up a simple tracking system to understand: 1. Which metrics I should monitor on LinkedIn to track professional visibility 2. How to determine if my keyword strategy is working 3. Methods to track where inbound opportunities are finding me 4. Simple ways to A/B test different profile elements 5. How to create a monthly digital presence performance dashboard