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The Best Social Media Platforms to Show Off Your Skills

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This digital age has allowed for unemployed individuals or job-seekers to increase their reach when it comes showcasing their skills. You are able to connect with both local and international clients and even choose whether you’d like to work from home or in-house. Utilizing the available social media platforms to show off your skills is crucial in reaching professional success.
We’d like to share the best platforms for self-promotion and job-seeking individuals:

LinkedIn
“96% of all recruiters are using LinkedIn and naturally most of them will be posting regular job ads on their profiles”. – Siofra Pratt, Social Talent
LinkedIn is filled with industry professionals as well as business owners, agencies, and recruiters. Basically, the exact platform where you want to make your mark. Tapping into your network is crucial to finding employment and building industry relationships. Connecting with previous employers and professionals will add to your credibility and the platform also serves as an online resume.

The Type of Content
The type of content shared on LinkedIn is what sets it apart from other social channels. Here, it’s about your professional voice and showcasing your expertise within your industry. Here you can showcase your talents, mention your projects and educate others by using the Publishing tool or commenting and interacting on other posts.

Tips for Best Practice
1. Your profile should be completed and detailed
2. Share educational posts that are relevant
3. Keep it professional
4. Only ‘connect’ with people you know to keep it credible

Facebook Groups and Pages
Facebook offers a variety of ways in which you can use the platform. We’ve also come to know that prospective employers are likely to ‘check out’ your social pages to get a better idea of who you are. Keep this in mind when you are busy with job search and make sure all your privacy and security settings are in place should you want to keep your life private.
Facebook groups are valuable in connecting with the right people. For instance, if you are a freelancer; join communities that are created for your specific skills and service offerings. People love to refer or recommend individuals that they know – and building relationships within these groups will increase your reach for possible projects and positions.
The audience will depend on the type of group that you join. If it’s a local graphic design group, those are the people you can expect. If it’s a job search group or page you can expect a wide array of people.
The Type of Content
Groups: Apart from sharing your portfolio or work, you should target your content to create a ‘demand’. Even just answering questions and educating others will help establish your credibility – thus showing off your skills. Many of these groups might have certain days where promoting yourself is allowed.
Business Pages: This is probably one of the best ways to make your stamp within your niche. Starting a business page on Facebook shows initiative and willingness to engage. Here you can share content from your website, other relevant resources, and images of your packages, services and portfolio work. When job-seeking you should also be following the business pages of the companies that you would love to work at.

Tips for Best Practice
1. Consider the location of the group
2. Build an audience on your Page
3. Like other pages that are relevant to your Business Page
4. Keep it relevant to your industry/brand
5. Follow the group rules in order to respect the members
6. Don’t just promote yourself, educate and help others
7. Be active and check in regularly

Contently
For those in content marketing, copywriting and advertising, Contently is a brilliant online portfolio platform. It allows you to create a page filled with links and samples of your work and experience. Although the platform itself is not created for social engagement it will serve you well to share this link via your other social platforms. Gone are the days where recruiters want to see basic resumes or download files and files of sample work. Make it easy for them to notice you and curate your best work on these pages.
Twitter
Twitter’s audience can also vary greatly, depending on whether you keep it personal or brand specific. Twitter is a great platform to showcase your personality and opinions apart from the services that you have to offer. Think of Twitter as the ‘communication’ platform where the discussions take place.
Some companies have Twitter accounts especially for hiring individuals within their firm, make sure to follow all these accounts within your industry. What makes Twitter effective is the direct channel of communication with the company and enables you to connect with executives or higher level employees. You’d be surprised to see how many of these ‘bosses’ manage their own Twitter accounts.
It’s also a helpful tool for connecting with other individuals within your niche to start collaborations. Using the hashtag search when job-seeking on Twitter can give you that needed edge just because of the quick response time.

Tips for Best Practice
1. Twitter is time-sensitive, you have to be ‘there’ to be noticed
2. If you are using it for business, don’t share or update content that could damage your reputation (here’s talking to you, closet-trolls).
3. List your current position or skills in your bio.
4. Join ‘live’ chats on Twitter to gain exposure
5. Connect with the right brands

Medium
If you don’t have a personal or business blog in place yet, this is the ideal platform to create a voice. There is already a built-in audience which takes away the pressure to build your own audience and promoting your content.
Many individuals use Medium as a blogging platform to share their knowledge, discuss specific topics or showcase their experience.
The audience that you share your content with will also be niche-specific and is ideal for sharing targeted information within a certain category.
Buffer shares this valuable article on How to Use Medium as a Marketing Platform.

Tips for Best Practice
1. Vary your content from long and short form copy to promote your brand
2. Find and follow other authors and influencers
3. Comment and engage with others to become ‘visible’
4. Use the request notes feature to collaborate with others
5. Focus on the quality of your stories – medium focuses on readers, not traffic
6. Make use of the formatting features
7. Submit to relevant Medium Collections

Instagram
Did you know that Instagram can be useful for so much more than just sharing your breakfast, new hair-do or your cute puppy? It has become a valuable resource for sharing anything visually aesthetic which can relate to your self-promotion.
Make use of apps such as Canva to create personalized visuals to promote your services or products. Instagram is ideal for those looking to work in the creative industry. Share your latest designs, artwork, or photography. With Instagram’s latest ‘Stories’ you can also showcase a day in the life of your job.

Tips for Best Practice
1.Link to your website or portfolio in your bio
2. Use the right collections of hashtags
3. Create quality visuals
4. Share more than just yourself
5. Mention that you are available for hire

YouTube
“YouTube has the distinguished position of being the second largest search engine in the world”. – Kissmetrics
Although this might not be everyone’s cup of tea; YouTube can really open a lot of doors and make a statement. For those in the beauty, lifestyle and education industries Youtube is a great platform for creating long-standing video content. Not to mention videographers, editors, artists, producers, academics and marketing professionals. Whatever your craft; there is a way to promote it with video content.

Tips for Best Practice
1. Decide on your niche and specific topics
2. Make sure that you have call to action buttons
3. Do your research and provide valuable content
4. Provide high-quality content with good sound
5. Be presentable and relatable

To Summarize
Consistency is key no matter which social media platforms you choose. In order to stay relevant and have prospective clients or employers notice you, you have to be active on all profiles and keep your information up to date. That’s why it’s advised to only choose the number of platforms that you will be able to actively manage. If that means only focusing on LinkedIn and Facebook at first, that’s also okay.
Consider where the audience you want to reach will be ‘hanging out’. Some of these channels might seem redundant within your industry, but you will be surprised at where you can obtain clients and build connections.
If you are interested in what industry experts are viewing as the most important social platforms for job-seeking, have a look at this informative list.
The most important part is that you learn to promote yourself in a humble, yet confident manner. Show people that you know what you are talking about without hoping to get something in return. As the saying goes, when you want others to understand your value; show them, don’t ‘tell’ them.

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