Looking for your next opportunity? Four out of five employers check online. If you aren’t on there, they can’t find you. And not having a profile is worse than a bad one. It means you are a dinosaur or luddite. Remember, you choose what you want to post, so make it count! And think twice about what you do share.
Power to the Profile: What You Need to Know About Social Media/Online Profiles
By Dawn Rasmussen, CMP, Pathfinder Writing and Career Services LLC
Psst! Wanna know a secret?
Most people have social media profiles. Well, that’s no secret.
But what many professionals don’t know is that those profiles are insufficient!
Honestly, when was the last time you added anything to your online profile such as LinkedIn?
Or worse: Did you just do a quick fill-in for all the required fields and then let your profile sit, thinking, “If I build it, they will come?”
Nope, nope and nope.
Unless you have a robust, vibrant, and ACTIVE profile, you won’t get regularly indexed by search engines and the almighty Google.
Just like for any websites, you need to use SEO (search engine optimization) strategies for online profiles to get yourself near the top of the list.
And how you achieve this is by surrounding your profiles with keywords that are most relevant to what you do.
Why? Because 4 out of 5 employers check online. If you aren’t findable when they search for you, then that conveys lack of relevancy in their minds.
In today’s world where nearly 90% of all people make buying decisions based on online reviews/presence, what you say, how you say it, and where it is said can make a difference in your career fortunes.
Think of the last time you needed a product or service … did you do research online to find all the options? Did you read product reviews by industry guides? Did you read customer comments/reviews?
Well, employers are doing the same thing, so that’s where having a robust, thriving profile comes into play.
That means dedicating time towards content creation. Once you get your profiles built up, then it is a matter of regular maintenance … after all, you don’t want to give the “lights are on but nobody’s home” impression that all activity ceased after you built the profile, right?
The more involved you are in your social media profiles, the better search rankings you’ll enjoy, and clients or prospective employers will see all the amazing things you are doing and will be much more likely to reach out than your competitor who isn’t doing these things.
