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Advice / Job Search / Networking

10 Ways to Use Social Media for Your Career—Not Just for Killing Time

We all love using social media: bragging about our cooking skills on Instagram, updating friends on our winter getaways on Facebook, sharing our internal dialogue on Twitter. It’s fun, it’s easy, and it keeps us entertained when we’re bored.

But what we always forget is that social media is one of the best tools for your career, too. It’s great for advertising your personal brand, finding and landing a job, or moving up in your field.

So, if this is news to you, or you’re just not sure exactly how to accomplish this, here’s everything you need to know about using social media in a professional sense.

(Bonus: It’s way more fun than say, writing a cover letter.)

  1. First, you should learn the basics of creating the ultimate online presence, no matter where or who you are.
  2. Also, even if you haven’t thought about using it for your career, you might not realize that what you have done may be hurting you anyways.
  3. You’ll want to get familiar with these six social platforms. Hint: It’s not just LinkedIn that you should be on.
  4. If you’re a Twitter fiend, this is a list of the best accounts out there for all things related to your job.
  5. Fun fact: Facebook groups are the new LinkedIn groups.
  6. However, LinkedIn still matters! Here are the kinds of groups you should be in.
  7. And, for all the job seekers, you’ll want to make sure your profile is spic and span, from your photo to your URL—it’s one of the first places recruiters go.
  8. Speaking of people looking for new and better opportunities, there are plenty of ways you can use social media to become more successful in finding the perfect job.
  9. Did you know that you can even use Instagram to your advantage? Yup—you can learn a lot about a company’s culture by looking at its account.
  10. But no matter what platform you prefer, you’ll want to craft a killer professional bio for each one.


Photo of social media courtesy of Bloomua/Shutterstock.