Building Social Media Presence online

There are many ways for you to achieve an upper hand on the competition in the business world. As technology expands and becomes an ever-evolving platform of communication, you must understand how to market yourself. Luckily, there are methods for building a social media presence online. Within the Digital Media Program at Gulf Coast State College, there are many programs to help you navigate through the best practices for those techniques so that you can be effective with online marketing. Some of these courses are Digital Media Productions which deals with becoming a Citizen Journalist and blogger, Interactive Media with helps with developing moving graphics to add visual appeal to your page and Digital Portfolio which is designing and branding your online portfolio. Whichever way you use it, make sure that it is visual appealing and represent you as a brand.

ALL PLATFORMS THE SAME

A problem many people face when creating online or digital branding is having different usernames across twitter, Facebook and the likes. This creates confusion if a business was to search for you beyond a single social media application. A single identity also helps develop a brand or company if you are looking to become an entrepreneur. Also, if your identity starts to become successful, people will carbon copy your name and if someone takes your name on social media, it means you must find an alternate name. For best practices, once you have identified yourself as any form or entity. Create accounts for it on all social media, even if you aren’t using it immediately to have it under your name. For my brand, I have devised this technique so that when I am ready to populate it with information, I don’t have to find an alternate name for that account.

CITIZEN JOURNALIST

Becoming a Citizen Journalist is another effective way to gather an audience and spread word about information you deem important. At Gulf Coast State College, within the Digital Media Program, there is a course entitled, “Digital Media Production” which helps develop methods to not only find information through advanced Google techniques but also through twitter. News has advanced beyond a typical reporter addressing issues locally or nationally in a non-biased way. It has evolved into average people reporting news through platforms such as WordPress. This is an important technique for sharing and covering not only topical news but information about yourself as well. Keeping an audience up to date on plans and future projects will help keep them engaged. The attention span of the audience today is very short because they are bombarded with so much information, so you must capture their attention immediately through strong definitive points, pictures and videos. Do not forget about Video blogging or podcasts as well. Podcasts are extremely popular today. It is a great way to engage your audience and share information about you or your ideas. Here is a video about the Popularity of Journalism.

YouTube Video Courtesy of THNKR

GRAPHICS MAKE INFORMATION POP

When you talk about effectively communicating your presence on social media, you can’t leave out graphics. Another course I strongly recommend taking in the Digital Media Program is Interactive Media. Strong visuals create a better impact than simply using words. If you look in newspapers, magazines and more, you will see that words are accompanied with visuals to add impact to the stories being told. Interactive media deals with Adobe After Effects. It is a more advanced program, but it is used by many top professionals in the market today. Learning this program will give you an edge on social media. Powerful moving graphics add life to words, banners and page designs. You could even create videos completely with Adobe After Effects or accompany it with videos for compositing. It is primarily a compositing video for post-production work but can be used for many applications online. I personally create short graphic videos for my brand to add impact to the information I am showcasing. This is very appealing on social media apps such as Instagram, YouTube or Facebook because visuals are the bases for the application.

DIGITAL PORTFOLIO

There are many more programs to highlight but for time sake, I will highlight one more course. A course I also strongly recommend is Digital Portfolio. I will say this course helped me tremendously with identifying the type of product designing for my brand and other applications to put that information on. One huge feature is understanding how to create a LinkedIn page. LinkedIn is how business professionals connect and build relationships. It is like Facebook, but it is a professional version in my opinion. On my online accounts I try to keep a digital portfolio of my arts from past to present so that if any business is interested in my work and online media identity, they can simply google my name and see what I offer without a conventional interview. It also creates leverage if you have thousands of followers online and you are interested in working for or partnering up with a business. Branding is so important with building a social media presence. With the advancement of technology, you must be willing to learn new ways and adapt to the technology. I recently started to use Twitter more regularly and was surprised that National Geographic reached out to me about my positive responses that I have been tweeting. You never know who is watching and following your product. Make sure it represents you because branding is all about who you are and not others perceiving what you should be. Furthermore, a mindset that should stay with you is to never feel that you are too old or young to use any technology.  Social media is simply that, being social. Grow your audience with regular engagement and make your online portfolio one that utilizes all the techniques you learn from college or through other various sources. Here is a video about sites to help you develop your online portfolio.

YouTube Video Courtesy of Seso

FINAL WORDS, YOUR IDENTITY

As you develop your brand, identify the type of business or portfolio you want, make sure it represents you. I say that because a persona is something that is hard to shake. For example, if you wanted to be a firefighter and your social media presence is all about you gambling. It sends the wrong message for the career you are looking for. Social Media can be for personal use or for branding. It comes down to the reason why you created the account and what you are ultimately seeking for it. I personally want to own a brand that revolves around my creativity and though it is in the beginning phases, I see a lot of success and failures. You aren’t going to become a success over night. You won’t necessarily get the presence you are looking for either at the beginning. You must continue to work on your identity and build upon showcasing that truth. Through the help of many programs within the Digital Media Program such as Interactive Media, Digital Media Productions and Digital Portfolio, you can create the image you want and design your presence around it. I believe that engagement is an important business tool. I would advise watching for example YouTube Videos about each app to find the most effective way to utilize it. There isn’t a science to social media marketing. You simply must be willing to make mistakes, grow and be consistent. These techniques hopefully will provide you with the best knowledge to grow your presence online.

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