So, social media. Yep, it’s a guilty pleasure that we all deny using as much as we actually do, but we just can’t help ourselves falling into the deep dark hole of your friends’ mums daughters’ cats Instagram account. Or if that’s not your groove maybe torturing yourself by watching countless videos of burgers oozing with cheese or anything oozing with cheese in fact. Social media is now part of our everyday social life but have you ever considered how important it is for your professional life?

We’ve been writing CV’s for years but a new era of CV’s has come to light. Your Facebook profile, your twitter account and your Instagram account. Yes, you may have made yourself a lovely LinkedIn account, in which you’ve showcased yourself professionally (which we are not dismissing by the way) but have you ever thought about what you’re posting elsewhere? Google is a wonderful thing, once you’ve posted a picture online it might be quite difficult to go away.. try it! Google yourself and we can bet you’ll find a random picture of yourself from twitter about 5 years ago that you didn’t even know was still there. It’s become very common practice for recruiters to check social media accounts so why not use it for your benefit?

We’ve pulled together some tips/ideas to help you use social media to promote yourself professionally.

Keep it separate

If you love social media and can’t bring yourself to sacrifice posting about a million and 1 random things each week, why not create yourself a professional Instagram where you only post work related content? Many teachers have started doing this to keep their work and social, social media accounts separate. Make your personal profile private and your professional one open to the public, this is a great way to share your lesson plan ideas and general education related content. Your handle could be @MissJones @TeachingWithHelen then that way, it’s easy for recruiters and other teachers to link with you!

Your profile picture

Of course, whether you decide to have two profile’s or not – you still need to make sure your profile picture is appropriate. Even though your profile may be private, the public can still see your profile picture as tiny as it may be! Try and make sure you use a friendly picture, maybe of you smiling so that even if they can’t access your profile, they can see you look like a friendly character.

Your bio

As well as your profile picture, when your account is private it is still sometimes possible to view your bio. Make sure you bio is up to date with relevant qualifications and interests. You could have “Cardiff University Second Year PGCE Student. Specialism: Languages”. Think of it as your ever so tiny CV!

The clear-out

It’s always a good idea to give your social media a detox of all cringe-worthy tweets, comments and pictures. We’ve all posted random content on social media before now but it’s best to take a step back and decide what content best represents you as a person at this moment in time.  Having your personal profile open to the public is a great way to give recruiters confidence that you’re an open and honest person with nothing to hide.

Let us know how you get on, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Instagram and like our Facebook page while you’re at it!