Building a Personal Brand for Professional Purposes with Social Media

by Melissa Martin, School of Management

One of the joys of the Internet Marketing class (MKTG315) I teach in the School of Management is how easily we can engage with the real world virtually. Websites, advertising campaigns, and social media initiatives are accessible with the click of a mouse, allowing us to view and analyze current examples in this dynamic area. This semester, we are focusing on developing the students’ expertise in social media by encouraging them to promote a brand close to their hearts: themselves.

Most discussions of employment prospects and social media focus on caveats—tales of employees fired or of prospective employees denied jobs due to ill-considered Facebook posts. Indeed, about two-thirds of employers report that they check social media sites for information about job candidates. But Facebook is not the only forum available, as my students learn from the Social Media project I assign. Other tools—Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs—offer an opportunity to build a personal “brand” for professional purposes, enhancing rather than detracting from the chances of being hired.

The Social Media project I assign requires students to demonstrate a range of writing skills—the ability to be concise (Twitter), to summarize one’s strengths (LinkedIn), and to hold an audience’s attention (a blog). Students must connect their accounts to the full social media universe with “sharing” links and incorporate multimedia elements such as photos and videos to enrich their content. The project also includes a significant peer review component, done virtually, giving students a real audience for the public documents they create.

At the end of the semester, students will have benefited in a number of ways from completing the interconnecting elements of the project. They become savvy creators of online professional identities, preparing them for tasks that might be assigned to an entry-level marketer. They may, for example, inherit responsibility for the employer’s social media presence. The project prepares them for this task by building a solid foundation in the technical, social, and cultural aspects of using the tools. In addition, they will have assembled a professional presence online available to any hiring manager who chooses to investigate.