From changing leaves on some trees to worries over the Tigers’ playoff hopes, signs of summer’s end are all around us. This really struck me over the weekend as I watched students move in to their dorms at Wayne State.

The end of summer might have some thinking about trips they wish they had taken, or how to fit in one last barbecue before the doom and gloom of the polar vortex surrounds us again. However, seeing those eager students moving in over the weekend reminded me of one thing: online reputation management.

Starting college – or a new year in college, or graduating college, or sending a child off to college – is a great opportunity to brush up on some online reputation management pointers. You are judged by what people read and find about you online, so why not make sure it’s how you want to be seen?

Here are six quick tips for anyone looking to preserve, rebuild or maintain his or her online reputation:

(Note: While I’m using back to school as the cheap hook for this blog post, these tips really should be taken seriously by everyone. In some respects, younger social media users have had more training on online privacy than older users – so these are valuable for all)

1. Know how to use Facebook’s privacy settings: Facebook – the 800 pound gorilla of social networks – offers robust privacy controls that make it easy to pick and choose exactly who you want to see each post.
   Take a minute to review Facebook’s basic privacy information so you know how to use these to your advantage. For example, I share much more frequently with my “Close Friends” list on Facebook of around 20 people than I do with my entire friends list. This is both to not bore folks who don’t know me as well with my random musings and to make sure anyone who sees my posts is someone I trust to read them. You might also want to make your past posts on Facebook private.
2. Build out your LinkedIn profile and make it public: A public LinkedIn profile usually ranks pretty well on major search engines. Make sure your public LinkedIn profile is complete and up-to-date.
3. Your profile images count: The headshots you use for Facebook, Twitter, etc. don’t need to be boring or staid – but they probably shouldn’t feature you at your most wild. Use photos for your profile pictures online you would be okay with a future employer seeing.
4. It’s never too early to set up a website and register a domain name: Way back in the ‘90s, a young middle school Graham Davis set up GrahamDavis.com through some free domain name registration site… which I then lost, not having a credit card to renew it one year later!If your name is available as a domain name – buy it now! Seriously: don’t delay and spend the ten bucks with GoDaddy to snap it up today. Renew it for the rest of your life. This is extremely valuable online real estate WELL worth the 2.7 cents/day to maintain.
   Even if you don’t set up a site on that domain name, it’s worth owning. It’s very easy to set up a basic website on your domain name using a service like WordPress.com, Tumblr or Blogger.  This can be a great way to feature basic info about yourself along with how you can be contacted in lieu of a more robust site.
5. Set up a Google Alert for your name: Google Alerts send you email notifications whenever Google indexes new content around a particular search term. They’re free and easy to set up at www.google.com/alerts. I have alerts set up on my name – so whenever new content goes up online with “Graham Davis” in it, I see it right away.
   Think about anyone else with your name before doing this. You might need to add your name in quotes or add the city you live in to your Google Alerts to avoid false-positive matches. (One example: The recalled former governor of California “Gray” Davis is actually named Graham, so I sometimes get matches for him).
6. Always assume anything you post online can be found: When I say things like this to my students at MSU I worry I sound like one of Charlie Brown’s teachers – but just about anything you post online can be found or tracked down somehow. Trust me: I’ve spent a lot of time doing political opposition research and am amazed by what’s posted online.
   What does this mean? Be conscious of what you’re posting online and what people are posting of you online.  Don’t assume that random newspaper comment you leave can’t be tracked down or traced to you – and don’t even assume if you delete something online it’s gone for ever.

Don’t get too wrapped up in the technology. The best way to protect your reputation is just basic common sense: don’t do stupid things. Pretty basic stuff, right?