In the age of the internet, social media can be your superpower – but how? Make the best out of your career with the right personal branding. Personal branding through social media is how an individual advertises oneself in order to create a proper impression on those who seek them up online. More than just for sharing what you have for lunch on an Instagram story or giving a spoiler of the latest One Piece episode on Twitter, social media can do more when it comes to making you look more appealing in front of potential employers. Here is how you can manage your social media to benefit your career!
Your personal brand is defined as what others think of you, associate with you, or the ideas that spring to mind when they hear your name. Everything is online now, thus the stronger your online presence is, the stronger you will be in real-life situations.
People will see you as an expert in your subject if you have solid personal branding on social media. People tend to trust individuals far more than businesses, hence being well-known as an individual will improve your credibility as a talent. Strong personal branding attracts great attention. For example, a financial advisor who often shares their personal finance tips on their social channels tends to have more followers and higher engagements. People tend to believe them more and end up buying insurance from the company they are affiliated with.
Ease of access to social media is also used by companies to check a candidate’s credibility before bringing them to the team. Looking through your LinkedIn profile and observing your posts on other social media accounts, will help recruiters decide whether you really deserve the employment or not. No wonder, social media screening is increasingly becoming one of the considerations in the recruitment process.
With the right impression, you can demonstrate your credibility, distinguish yourself from your competitor, and showcase your specialty on skills and experiences in the related field. In short, personal branding helps show the unique qualities that you can offer to the prospective company.
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If you want to appeal to your followers while drawing potential boss’ attention, you have to balance your social media content. For example, you can use 10 percent of your profile to advertise self-promotional content or product you love, 25 percent to share about your thoughts or what you feel is important, 40 percent to engage in conversations on issues that matter or interacting with your colleagues and friends, and 25 percent to share meaningful postings, websites, and similar stuff that are relevant to your audience.
For more, here are steps to start to strengthen your personal branding on social media that can actually improve your career path!
How do you want people to perceive you? Although the answer may vary, you surely want to make the best out of your personal profile. Make sure that your persona is something you like doing or have passion in and can enhance your career progression. For example, if you are a front-end developer, you can portray personal branding as a JavaScript enthusiast. This way, your social media content can be about you sharing insights and tips about JavaScript. Other than you can establish a strong personal branding about something you actually have expertise in, you can attract potential future employers as you have both skills and a proven social media persona about JavaScript.
Each social media platforms serve different purposes, so you need to select one or two platforms that suit you best. Although it is possible to utilize all platforms, it will take up much time. It is best to stick with two: LinkedIn and a social media of your choosing, such as Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook. It all depends on who you are trying to reach with your content and personal branding. TikTok is great to reach Gen Z and will be good if you aim to make content in the form of videos. Instagram is a good alternative to reach both Gen Z and millennials if your content is relatively short in the form of videos and photos or edited images. If you prefer writing microblogs, Twitter will be a good choice. If you want to write longer passages for your personal branding content, Facebook will do. Make sure to keep these social media accounts public, so you are discoverable by the public, including potential employers.
Once you are settled with the chosen social media platforms, you need to come up with a content plan. This means that you need to decide on a schedule to post your personal branding content, such as once or twice a week on LinkedIn and perhaps even every day when it is for social media. The key to maximizing this is to be consistent by committing to the frequency since people will need to see that you are an online persona with persistence to share insights on a certain topic.
In the end, the key to building solid personal branding through social media is to show your authenticity by only posting content that represents your true call and personality. For example, if you are an aspiring writer, you can craft an interesting quote that shows your passion for writing on your LinkedIn status. Be consistent and eventually, a good reputation reflected on your social media profiles will be an advantage for your career.
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