Ch-ch-changes: Reflection
Whilst working on this blog post, it was immediately apparent to me that for different people, developing one’s professional online profile would be a very different task depending on what one was trying to achieve. I found Jess’s blog post a particularly noble attempt to create a checklist of steps for anyone to take in developing your profile – everything she wrote would be of use to anyone trying to utilise social media. I found her first point, in particular, “Decide what your goal is”, to be very valuable, as there is little point in pursuing a direction with your profile which does nothing for, or in fact hinders, the objective you are trying to reach.
I did, however, feel that it was slightly short, perhaps missing out some important points as I mentioned in my comment. In particular, I felt there was a lack of emphasis on interaction, which Nabeel also mentioned in his comment, though in a more specific way:
“you didn’t mention the ways in which we as potential employees can engage with [employers] or attract them to our profiles.”
Whilst I disagree with the specificness of the comment when compared to the ultimate aim of Jess’s post, I believe that Jess could have touched further on a general level as to how one’s profile might attract and engage one’s desired audience (In Nabeel’s case, employers).
Charlie’s blog post took a very different direction, looking at a more specific aim: building brand. His discovery of BrandYourself was of particular interest and I definitely plan to use it in the future. What I found particularly fascinating, though, as I stated in my comment, was that so many blog posts focused on LinkedIn and Twitter for development of business based profiles. Twitter’s popularity in particular, I was somewhat surprised by, and Charlie summed up the reasons for its usefulness very neatly in his response:
“Twitter is a really well sorted way of debating and communicating, and I’m convinced the 140 character limit, the way the timeline is chronologically sorted and how easy it is to use is the reason it is perceived to hold so much potential.”
I did find the article that he linked to be very interesting, however, with Twitter bringing in more Facebook-like features. It shows that, despite the popularity of Twitter within communities such as ours, Twitter still believe they can expand their userbase into Facebook’s territory. It will be interesting to see whether they can do so whilst maintaining the website’s strengths and not introducing any sense of “exclusivity” (as Charlie aptly put it) that can be inherent in the nature of Facebook.
References
Austin, S. and Koh, Y. (2014). Six New Features to Expect From Twitter Digits on WSJ.
Burgess, C. (2014). Ch-Ch-Changes: Developing Your Online Profile The Progressive | Composition and Academia Blog of Calum Burgess.
Mason, C. (2014). Developing Your Brand Charlie Mason: Politics & International Relations Student at the University of Southampton.
Peacock, J. (2014). Have you heard of me, and if not why not? Jessica and the World Wide Web.
My comments: On Charlie Mason’s Blog
