As the saying goes: ‘Do something you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.’ So, what about if you're passionate about social media? Whether you love creating and posting content on social media platforms, or whether you've built up your own brand and have dreams to become an influencer yourself, there are many career paths that passion and drive in social media can take you down, and we're here to show you how.
How to Use Social Media to Better Your Career Prospects
One thing that people forget about social media is that not only is it an excellent platform for showcasing their talents and connecting with others. But it is also a helpful tool for helping you to advance your career and widen your prospects.
In fact, whatever job you're looking to get, one of the first places recruiters and potential employers will visit will be your social media profiles, whether they’re linked to your CV or professional network or not; therefore, it's essential to make a positive impression for the right reasons.
If you want to make a lasting impression on anyone who views your profile, here’s 6 ways to present yourself in a way that employers will respect.
1. Create your personal brand
If you're an active presence on social media then you may have already done this; however, it's still vital for you to understand precisely what it is that you're doing and why it helps you to stand out above the rest.
Your personal branding will help you to stand out and clearly establishes your talents to all who visit your profile and should create overall running themes, topics or even just the aesthetic motif throughout. As well as this, your brand should demonstrate the type of industries that you have a genuine interest in and would like to work in such as health and beauty, fashion, business, or finance industry to name just a few.
The more impressive and unique your personal branding is, the more likely you are to attract not only a broader and more genuine follower base and but it will also demonstrate your skills and capabilities to potential employers.
2. Develop a niche
Working in social media is quite a broad and general term as there are many different job roles and aspects of social media that you can get involved in. Therefore, it helps to narrow things down and specialise in a niche to show off your particular set of skills and interests when it comes to getting a job.
Your niche should be in line with your personal brand, therefore if you are a fashion and beauty blogger, then you might stick to social media platforms such as Instagram or Tumblr to show off images and details of outfits or makeup you've created. Whereas if you're a food or a mummy blogger, then perhaps you should stick to social platforms such as Pinterest and Twitter, which are easy platforms to share your thoughts, recipes and tips.
3. Focus on just a few social media platforms
As you already know, there are plenty of social media platforms you can use; however, you shouldn't try to be on all of them and here's why.
For you to demonstrate to employers that you are social media proficient and that you can create enough content to keep your following interested, it's essential for you to post regularly with fresh and exciting content. Which can be hard to do if you have over 10 social media account pages to sustain while also simultaneously leading a busy lifestyle.
Therefore, it's best practice for you to stick to just a few social profiles for you to maintain them in a way which keeps both your followers interested and potential employers impressed. There's nothing worse than seeing social accounts that are barren of both followers and content.
4. Follow influencers who you look up to
Keen foodie? Aspiring fashion editor? Future business director? Follow likewise, people in the industry who inspire you and who have been able to succeed and encapsulate exactly it is what you want to do. Not only does it show that you're keen and ambitious but that you also have a clear idea of where you want to be in the future in terms of career prospects.
In addition to this, it also can help you to build relationships with influencers who are exactly where you want to be, by liking, sharing and interacting with the type of content they post. This will not only increase the number of followers you attract but will also stand you in good stead to get noticed by influencers and others in the industry who have some great connections.
5. Make sure your image is professional
If you want to work in social media, then it's a good idea for you to include links to your social media profiles not only on your CV but also on your professional networks such as LinkedIn or your personal blog. Linking out ensures that recruiters get to witness your skills first hand and personal brand that you have created.
That’s why it’s absolutely essential to ensure the image that you portray on social media is a professional and squeaky-clean image. So, ensure that you do the following:
- Leave unprofessional images or updates off of your social media.
- Or create separate professional social accounts and keep your personal accounts private.
- Leave any strong or controversial views off of your accounts.
- Include a headshot of yourself, a professional image or logo for your profile photo.
6. Show off your skills in a variety of different media
Whether you're creating content for websites or for social media, it's good to have some variation in the different types of content your creating, whether your curating tweets, producing custom images and graphics, videos or recording podcast for your followers, it's all great.
Even if you don't have the skills to be able to take and create your own custom images, also just recording and editing your own videos demonstrates that your familiar with creating and experimenting with different media and will look great to employers.
Lastly
As more businesses and websites make the switch over to digital marketing and social media, there become more opportunities for those who are passionate about social media to start a career doing something they love. Although for the most part, you'll learn a lot of the tricks of the social media trade on the job, it's always beneficial to demonstrate your passion for employers to see first-hand and to set you above the rest.
by Charlotte Ross, SEO Specialist for the Digital Marketing and SEO Agency Dojono.com