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A Student’s Guide to Building a Professional Online Presence

Quick Highlights:

  • Creating a professional online presence, like a LinkedIn profile, is crucial for job hunting and building your personal brand.
  • Consider platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram depending on your industry and professional needs.
  • Ensure your social media profiles are professional, including a good photo, compelling bio, and highlights of relevant experience.
  • Actively connect with industry leaders, share relevant content, and engage in conversations to enhance your visibility and network.
  • Be mindful of privacy settings, avoid unprofessional photos, and keep interactions positive to maintain a professional image online.

Table of contents

Building a professional digital footprint is an increasingly important part of college student online branding. Many hiring managers will research your background through social media sites. Because of this, it is incredibly important that students have a professional online presence.  

Leveraging social media for job searches is important for more than just helping you find jobs and improve your personal brand. It can also help you learn about the industry if you follow experts in the field, and you can develop new networking opportunities. While college students and social media are already frequently paired together, the type of branding needed for a job search is entirely different from a typical social media account. 

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Understanding the Impact of a Professional Online Presence

With a professional online presence, you can showcase your skills and experience to an online audience. For example, you might connect your LinkedIn profile to a professional online portfolio, blog, or professional website. 

What is a professional profile? The definition of a professional profile can vary based on what career field you’re going into. For example, a videographer may want to link to videos they’ve worked on. Meanwhile, a writer may want to connect to examples of their best work. 

When it comes to college students and social media, the important thing is to build your professional network. The students, professors, and colleagues you meet now can eventually provide you with advice and support on a future job search.  

Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms

As you start building a professional online presence, you need to carefully consider which sites will be best for your college student online branding. While Linked In for college students is an incredibly popular option, you may also benefit from professional networking on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

LinkedIn: This is the most popular option for every industry, and there are more than 610 million users. 

Twitter: By using hashtags and engaging with followers, you can develop a Twitter following in your industry. 

Facebook: While Facebook is typically used for connecting with friends, there are some groups that you can use to network with people in specific industries, like finance and technology. 

Instagram: Instagram is popular for people who work as wellness or life coaches. It is also a useful networking site if you work in an image-focused field, like graphic design, fitness training, or video directing.

Setting Up Professional Social Media Profiles

As you start building a professional online presence, you should be thoughtful about how you make your accounts. You want to appear knowledgeable about your industry and as professional as possible. To get started, use the following steps. 

Professional Photo: When leveraging social media for job search purposes, you need a photo that looks professional and approachable.

Compelling Bio: With a compelling bio, you can give viewers a sense of who you are as a person and an employee. 

Relevant Experience Highlights: Use your relevant experience to highlight who you are and why someone would want to work with you. 

Build a Network: To get the most out of your LinkedIn profile for students, you need to work on building a professional network. Start by reaching out to people you know, and then use these connections to reach out to people in your friends’ networks as well. 

Include Relevant Skills and Achievements: If you know what type of job you want to apply for, make sure to include relevant skills and achievements on your social media profile. 

Optimizing Social Media for Job Searches 

As you learn how to build a LinkedIn profile for students, you should also consider the many different ways that you can optimize your profile. For example, you may want to reach out on LinkedIn for endorsements or join a group on Facebook. Meanwhile, you can use other platforms to follow industry leaders and access relevant content. 

Connect: The entire point of college student online branding is to build your network. With this in mind, you should LinkedIn to get endorsements from your colleagues and employers. Make connections with people you meet and use groups to improve your job search abilities. 

Follow Industry Leaders: On Twitter and other social media sites, follow industry leaders so that you can learn about upcoming changes and new research. 

Start a Conversation: Don’t be afraid to start a conversation. You can join a group about your industry or reach out to an unknown contact. 

Share Relevant Content: While it’s important to read and learn from the content other people share, you can also add value to your relationships by creating and sharing your own content as well.  

Content Strategies for Social Media

If you’re leveraging social media for job searches, remember to incorporate the following techniques. 

  • Create engaging content. 
  • Share useful, relevant insights. 
  • Post frequently and consistently to build a following. 
  • Target a niche in your field, so you can quickly build a reputation.
  • Showcase your expertise. 

Avoiding Common Pitfalls 

As you work on personal branding for college students, avoid some of the following mistakes:

  • Choosing the wrong privacy setting for profiles and posts
  • Adding unprofessional photographs
  • Misusing hashtags
  • Arguing with your audience
  • Leaving negative reviews, comments, or feedback

Leveraging College Career Center Resources 

When it comes to college students and social media, don’t be afraid to reach out to your college for help. Your college’s career center will have advice and information on maintaining a professional online presence. You can also pay for resume reviews, attend workshops, or buy a social media profile consultation if you are uncertain about your online presence. 

Measuring the Success of Your Online Presence

There are many ways to measure the effectiveness of your online presence. For example, you may want to track the size of your audience or the number of interactions you have. Likewise, some people judge their college student online branding by the number of opportunities they get. 

It takes time to build your online presence, so be patient. As you get more data about the effectiveness of your profiles, incorporate the feedback and make changes. 

Start Creating a Professional Online Presence 

Building a professional online presence can help you start leveraging social media for job search success. When it comes to college students and social media, the important thing is to be willing to learn and adapt. As you improve your college student online branding, you can figure out which social media sites work best for your career goals.