Social media is now becoming a defining characteristic of your professional portfolio, on par with your CV or Resume and your ability to produce a quality cover letter. Employers now merely have to search your name, and, if you use social media, they will already get an idea of your interests and achievements and your ability to give an account to yourself. Similarly if you are setting up a start-up or your own portfolio as a self-employed worker having a strong social media presence professionally is now essential.
Thanks to our guide below you will have all the information you need to start a strong social media portfolio that will enable you to either promote your business or your own career. Remember that up to 50% of small business don’t even use social media yet so your intelligent use of your social media presence professionally can be a step into the door as much as a CV can be.
What is a social media strategy?
Having a social media strategy is essential if you are going to use it properly in a professional setting. A randomized, scatter-gun posting style and a couple of likes or retweets here and there are not going to do you any favours. What you need is a structure that allows you to know exactly what you are doing with your social media online. In order to have a social media strategy you require the following points :
- Setting achievable objectives, based on the SMART goals principles. They must thus be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. This helps you in a later evaluation process and also in terms of time management and realistic output
- your core interests, strengths and weaknesses. Specialise in two or three topics that you post about and get to know other people also interested in these topics.
- Seek out who your protracted audience can be.
- This may be controversial, but ultimately controversy is not necessarily attractive if you are inexperienced. That means that you need to stand out through other means and if that means making strong attention getters that “rock the boat” (without descending into spam, abuse or disinformation), then so be it.
- Make a calendar of when you will make posts and try to stick to it religiously. This way you are not simply acting on a whim but spreading out what you are posting and when. If possible you can even use schedule functions that Facebook and twitter have.
How can I increase my social media reach?
Identifying your target audience is an essential step in eventually increasing your social media presence. You need to build a base network. And in order to do this you must not just post for your audience but engage with it too, building trusted relationships of a few users that will consist of about 20% of your audience. Another goal has to be how much you are perceived as an authority in your field or a leader in your market. Getting good reviews and references is now an essential part of marketing yourself online. You can use a series of calculators for this.
How can I make my social media more attractive?
Your social media can be more attractive by having brand consistency. This means that you are easily recognizable when people try to reach you by social media. Using similar Linked to brand consistency is the fact that most marketers rely on visual rather than written content. As such you need to understand the importance of graphical representations, pictures, pictograms, videos or other visual content and use these effectively, while still maintaining brand consistency.
How can I make my social media more professional?
In addition to branding consistency, you need to make sure that that your social media content looks professional. This means deleting any swear words or poor vocabulary/spelling. It goes without saying to that if you are running a personal social media account for your employment prospects, having pictures of 18-year-old you partying is not the best of ideas. Additionally, your profile pictures need to demonstrate you are able to present yourself professionally. Avoid party contexts, or passport photos.
How do you optimize social media such as LinkedIn?
Optimizing social media means using traditional targeting steps based on who you want to contact, but also some unorthodox ways too. Often people reduce social media use to the traditional social networks that have been in place : Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. However, increasingly more alternative social media are also good platforms to build a trusted community. Forums such as reddit for example are a great way to build a relationship with a fanbase, get feedback or become recognised as an excellent contributor.
The key then is to know where the users that haven’t been reached by you or your competitors target market lie in the online community. You want to be able to tap in to communities If you are doing it for your start up, make sure you calculate the ROI so you know which customers are seeing your posts and are tempted by them
. Dos and Dont when using social media professionally
DO
- Maintain brand consistency across your social media, whether it is visual or written.
- Try to personalise as much as possible in this respect.
- Build a network of people you know or trust as resources.
- Engage with any positive commenters as much as possible
DON’T
- Express extreme or out there views. This will weigh against you in the future. Try to be discrete and professional. If you offer expertise in a subject, try to present it in a non-provocative manner.
- Have party pictures as your professional profile. Create separate accounts if necessary, one your friends know you by and one for professional endeavours (with your real name)