June 14, 2023, by ahyeo2

Keeping Your Social Media Professional

Emily Oxbury, MA History Student Blogger 

Have you ever considered how your presence on social media could affect the way you portray yourself to potential employers? How can you use social media to demonstrate your passion and drive towards you dream career path?

Here’s my top five tips on how to keep your social media professional, and elevate your accounts to demonstrate your best skills and assets:

Create a new public profile

If you’re looking at entering a media or communications based job which may require you to use your personal accounts regularly, you might want to consider setting up a new public account just to showcase your best work. This way your music, sports and entertainment retweets won’t be muddled up amongst your showreels and sleek audio packages that you want potential employers to spot, should they check your social media channels.

Include professional profile photos  

Whilst we all love to share our holiday snaps and night out photos on Instagram, be sure to consider what your profile pictures show about you as a person. I’m not saying you have to be sat working hard at a desk in all your profile photos, but keeping them moderate and friendly will give a great first impression to any employers who stumble across your online accounts!

Provide links to your work

Again, this highly depends on the field of work you’re looking at going into, but providing links in your bio line of your profile can help people to quickly access your work and get a feel for who you are. If you’re a graphic designer, why not set up an online portfolio that can be linked in all your social media channels to showcase your best work? If you’re looking at video editing, provide links to your YouTube channel.

Connect with people

This may seem obvious for those of you who already use LinkedIn, but connecting with and following people within your industry of interest can really help you to get your foot in the door. Looking at what companies current projects are, their values and ethics and how their staff are representing their brand online could be really useful in an interview or online assessment. Moreover, if people follow you back, don’t be afraid to drop people a direct message to ask for advice or tips on how they got into their career – most people were once in your position as a student first entering the world of work and would be happy to help!  

Have fun! 

Don’t worry about making your social media pages seem like a business account, at the end of the day you’re still totally allowed to show  your personality and interests to your followers. You can still enjoy posting to social media as usual – just ensure you’re mindful about what impression your account would give to potential employers. Social media can be a great platform to get your foot in the door with a number of companies and virtually introduce yourself to employers. 

Find out more about getting your social media workplace ready.

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