Most of us will have some sort of online presence, whether we have chosen to or not.
Taking deliberate steps to build and manage your own online presence will mean that you have more control over what people see about you on the web. This way when people Google you, particularly potential employers, they will find your well-crafted online identity.
Below we’ve highlighted some of the best platforms for building your online presence.
Blog
Overview
A blog is a great way to develop an online profile as a member of your community or field of interest. It could be a traditional blog about the latest developments in your area, or you could use it as a portfolio of your work, especially in digital media or other creative fields.
Tips
- A good place to start is by finding other blogs that you like in your area of interest. What’s good about them? How are they written? What do they look like?
- Before starting, make a list of things that you might want to post about in the future so you’ll have something to fall back on if you run out of ideas; it can be easy to lose momentum with the frequency of posts after an initial surge of activity.
- Consider your posts’ titles carefully: the best blog posts often start with a headline or conclusion, to grab your readers’ attention and make them want to read your post. Then work back from the beginning to provide context and background etc.
Slideshare
Overview
Slideshare is the most popular place to share slidedecks. It has a lot of passing traffic and people can embed a Slideshare presentation in their own blog or website, so there is enormous potential for your slides to reach a significant audience beyond your existing online network.
A great slidedeck will be shared widely via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs. The chances are you will get more views for a slidedeck than you will for a video, tweet or blog post, so it’s a fantastic way to build your online reputation.
Tips
- Lose the bullet points: your slides are much more likely to be picked up and shared if they are visually appealing.
- Try to tell a story with your slides, rather than just presenting information.
- Make one point per slide, rather than trying to cram loads of text onto a single slide.
YouTube videos
Overview
If you’re building an online presence to further your future goals, creating YouTube videos are a great way to reach new audiences via a more visual method than a blog or Twitter account.
You can shoot excellent quality video with most phones, and free video editing software is good enough for most needs, so you don’t have to buy any expensive equipment or software to get going.
Tips
- Create a channel on YouTube so people can easily find all the videos you make. You can then divide your channel into themes using playlists, and link out to your other online platforms.
- Consider adjusting your settings so that comments only appear on your videos after you’ve approved them. Comments will often spark interesting discussions, but this won’t always be the case, so changing these settings means that you can delete unpleasant comments before they go live.
- Less is more! Your videos are more likely to be watched if they’re kept short and sweet.
Overview
If getting a job is your goal, LinkedIn is the place to be. It is the leading networking site used in the world of work, and is a great platform for you to create a profile to promote your skills, knowledge and experience via an online CV.
The site has fantastic search engine rankings: if people Google your name and you have a LinkedIn profile, this will be very high up the list of results. It’s important to greet potential employers (and they ARE Googling you!) with something professional that showcases your experience and interests, which is exactly what LinkedIn does.
LinkedIn allows you to add information about a wide range of areas to your profile, including honours & awards, organisations you belong to, skills that you have, projects you’ve been involved in and volunteering experience; so even if you don’t have any work experience, you can still build a compelling profile.
Tips
- Complete your profile! In particular, ensure that you have a smart-looking profile picture. An incomplete profile stands out immediately as looking unprofessional.
- Organise your profile to reflect your strengths. LinkedIn allows you to reorder the different areas of your profile, so make sure your stand-out stuff is at the top!
- Use LinkedIn as a search tool. It is heavily used for recruitment, so you can find out about job openings or internships this way. You can also research sectors or potential employers by checking their profiles.
Overview
Twitter is an excellent tool for engaging in conversations about your areas of interest. It can also be used very effectively as a means of exposing other elements of your online presence to the wider community by tweeting links to your other content. If you build up a following on Twitter, that network of people will be able to access your other areas of activity without being active on those other platforms.
Tips
- Before you start tweeting, put in a proper bio and photo. You need to give people a reason to follow you in your bio; let them know what you’re interested in and what you’ll be tweeting about.
- A good way to get started in building a network is to find someone you’re interested in and see who else they follow.
- See it as a conversation! Ask questions, share useful resources, links and tips, retweet others’ interesting tweets, join in discussions and make constructive comments where appropriate. If you only ever broadcast, you’ll be wasting a fantastic opportunity and you won’t build much of a network.
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий