by Amy Carlon
Social media can be a powerful platform for communication with others, especially those you have not met yet. For example, CSU’s group CSUSocial that was started up this year is amazing for connecting with people all over who are studying a variety of degrees.
What I have learned over the years is that the connections you make with like-minded people will aid in helping you with your career and own potential business. So here is what I have started doing during my time at uni to ensure I leave my degree with established connections.
If you didn’t know I am currently in my final year of my Photography degree here at CSU. My hope is to run a freelance business after university but this requires a lot of networking to gain clients. Here are three ways I have connected with potential clients:
We’ve all heard of Instagram and who can forget the now overly used hashtag! Well, you may only be thinking about those cheesy hashtags that have been circulating, but really, they are an amazing way to connect with people even locally. Building an aesthetically pleasing and relevant Instagram feed will draw people in, plus the use of local hashtags such as #waggawagga, #mytown, and #visitwagga will aid you being able to connect with future clients and other local businesses. Why not start using your own hashtag made just for your business?!
Facebook
This is a great platform for you to share your work with friends and family and, slowly, due to the sharing nature of pages and posts, it will enable your page and posts to reach a larger portion of people! It’s a great discussion platform as well, as people to tend to stop and read posts more often on Facebook than on Instagram.
Website
I have found it’s also important to have a platform where people from all forms of social media (or let’s not forget those in-person contacts you make) can go to see all of your work and connect to all of these social media platforms you have established.
My new favourite discovery is the use of a social feed on your website where your Instagram and Facebook posts all show up in the one place and are so easy to navigate!
So if you are looking to freelance the skills you have learnt at CSU, build a professional social media presence for yourself and start connecting.
Image sourced from: http://intelisys.org/
