Have you been job hunting? Check out these tips that can help you build a job-ready online presence.
If you’re serious about building a successful career in tech, your online persona is one of your most valuable assets. Key decision-makers, potential employers, and business partners that matter to you are all online. Which better place to sell yourself than where they can see you right away?
A well-crafted online presence will provide recruiters and relevant professionals within your industry with a glimpse of your skills and personality. It builds your brand, promotes you, and makes you much more attractive to the people that matter in your career.
Here’s how to build an online presence that can supercharge your tech career.
1. Set Up a Personal/Portfolio Website
You don’t have to own a tech business before setting up a website for yourself. If you’ve lived with such misconceptions, it’s time to rethink. A personal website is an indispensable asset for tech professionals who want visibility for their skills and tech career.
It’s one of your most significant assets for self-promotion. With a personal website, you can outline your skills and vision, prove your experience by showcasing work you’ve done in the past, and share projects you’re currently working on with the public.
Whenever people search for solutions to a problem your tech skills can solve, a personal website can serve as a channel to connect them to you. That’s not all; setting up a portfolio website for yourself ensures:
- You look professional.
- Increased credibility and authority within your tech niche.
- Clients and recruiters will be able to find you, rather than you trying to find them.
- A chance to show off your soft skills and personality.
With a few hundred dollars, you can hire someone to build a website for you. Or, you can do it by yourself. Thanks to free and easy-to-use website builders, you can set up a professional portfolio website through simple drag and drop operations—no coding required. Wix is an excellent website builder for building a portfolio website. Weebly is another popular option.
A personal website for a tech career should ideally include:
- Your skills: help visitors understand what exactly you can do for them
- A photo of you: clients and recruiters would prefer to see the face behind the words you share.
- Current projects: Show clients that you’re still active and passionate about your technology field.
- Videos and images: capture your potential employer’s attention much faster. It can also send clearer messages.
- Testimonials, downloadable resume, contact information (email and phone number), social media handles, educational qualification, and relevant industry certifications.
2. Create a Personal Brand
You’re not the only professional within your tech field. You’ll need a personal identity that separates you from the others to stand out. Your brand will help you stand out. Your brand is the first thing people think of when they talk about you in a professional setting.
To create your brand, you’ll need to:
- Pick a niche: you can’t tie your identity to everything. To stand out in tech, you’ll need to pick a niche and stick to it. Get clear on what you want in your career and build your online presence around it. When people associate you with a niche, you amass trust and authority within that niche. If you mention the name “Neil Patel” to bloggers, the first thing that comes to their minds is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). That’s because Patel has built his personal brand around SEO. This has helped him amass so much authority and trust that most of what he says is taken as an unquestionable fact.
- Be laser-focused on your key message, and be sure to make a lot of noise about it. Once people start thinking of you as the “SEO guy” or maybe the “iOS guy,” you’ll know your identity is beginning to stick.
- Increase your online presence: a strong personal brand does not end with your portfolio website and a Facebook page. You need to be where the action is. Join forums and social networks that have your ideal audience. Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and even Reddit, and Quora can help supercharge your visibility in tech.
- Stay active online: constantly interact with relevant Reddit groups, answer questions about your tech niche on Quora, post regularly about your projects on LinkedIn, and share your knowledge in YouTube videos. The more relevant audience you reach, the more awareness you create about your brand.
- Ensure to use the same name on all your social media accounts. This is very important. This makes it easier for people to find you across different social networks, while also reinforcing your identity and niche authority.
- Start networking: networking gets you the visibility you need to grow your professional identity. Attend tech meetups, virtual conferences, and seminars. Interact with relevant industry professionals and spread the word.
3. Power-Up Your Social Media
Social media is where most of the heavy lifting for your personal identity happens in today’s digital world. It provides potential clients and employers with an up-close view of your personal and professional persona. This is why you need to be intentional about your social media presence.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn are all important. However, if you have time for only two, it should preferably be LinkedIn and Facebook. If you are building a career in tech but don’t have a LinkedIn account, stop reading right away and create an account now. You’ll find LinkedIn to be a rich resource for job seekers.
According to Kinsta, 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn. In other words, 87% of people that might matter to your career are on LinkedIn. Being active on the platform brings you closer to them.
Similarly, with more than a billion people on Facebook, the social network represents a goldmine for visibility.
Below are some tips to optimize your social media for career enhancement and visibility:
- Clean up your social media. Go through your timeline and delete post items—articles, pictures and videos—that might hurt your personal identity.
- Follow as many relevant accounts as possible, and keep non-relevant ones to below 30%. Remember, what you do with social media is influenced to a great extent by the accounts you follow.
- Jump on trending issues within your tech niche and share your thoughts and ideas.
- Learn to use hashtags. They can help you keep track of trends and contribute to relevant topics.
- Keep your followers engaged. Reply to messages and comments as soon as you can. Create polls, host mini-contests, and do giveaways if possible.
- Initiate conversations about your tech niche and share relevant resources with your friends and followers. Giving out books, sharing important tips and how-to guides is a good way to start.
- Avoid politically or religiously heated topics, and stay away from insults.
- Not all social media are the same. Go online and search for courses on how to use specific social networks. Learn what works and what doesn’t.
4. Create Targeted Contents
The internet is powered by content. To get the visibility you crave, you’ll need to provide contents that appeal to your target audience. Therefore, it would be best to be intentional and targeted with your content strategy.
The best way to put yourself out there with your content strategy is to think about your audience before yourself. You need to make yourself a useful part of your community by being on the helping end. Share insights, ideas, and help. Research what your audience needs and serve them. However, whatever content you share must align with your end game.
- Do you want a job in the food industry as a techie? You could design and share food-related icon sets and infographics.
- Want opportunities in tech education? You could be noticed by running a tutorial blog.
- Want to break into the fintech industry? You could write and share fintech articles or create free resources like cheat sheets for your followers.
The key is to be targeted in your approach to content creation. Even if your audience is limited, they’ll undoubtedly be those that matter to your career and goals.
Be Consistent and Create Value
Whatever your career direction may be, there is one sure way to get visibility online: build a brand, be consistent and provide value.
Create and share valuable content, and your audience will naturally spread the word. As long as you stay consistent, people, that matter will eventually reach out to connect with you.
