Managing Your Online Presence

Why an online presence? 

What does this mean?

  • Take control over your online footprint in a way that furthers your professional goals. This includes content you make on your own or other platforms.

Why bother?

  • Provides avenues for sharing your scholarship and ideas
  • Helps to expand your professional network
  • Helps you manage what other people learn about you
  • Others—potential employers, colleagues, strangers– *will* search for you

BUT!

  • Don’t do every single thing—do what works for YOUR goals. This will look very different for each person and it will change over time.

Establishing your online presence

How to do this?

  • Get a sense of what’s already out there. Google yourself.
  • Think about your current professional and educational goals – where can you establish an online presence in a way that helps you achieve these?
    • For example, if your current goals include getting a job, setting up a LinkedIn could be helpful. As could engaging with other professionals in your field on Twitter, establishing a personal website, and having a profile on the history department website.
  • How should you present yourself on your own platforms? Again, think of your goals. Where do you want to be? How do you identify professionally? You want to share relevant information, not every single thing you’ve ever done. Kind of like a resume (vs. a CV)– resumes are more tailored for the audience(s) you want to reach.
  • Also, consider content others make about you— this happens one of two ways: because you reached out to them directly with something to share and/or they wrote or talked about you because they saw something you did/wrote/said (some good, some less helpful).

Where could this information go?

  • Your institution and/or school:
    • Employers will sometimes post bio pages for employees
    • Loyola History Department website– Taskstream. Be sure to set up your Taskstream profile! This is where all the Loyola history graduate student bios on this page come from. HGSA can provide more detail about how to do this.
    • Tell the history department media assistants (these are always history graduate students) what you’re up to so your work—as a student and then an alumnus– makes it into department news stories and the department’s social media feed.
  • Your professional field:
    • H-Net comments and discussions.
    • Publish material on relevant blogs and websites, like those found here.
    • Podcasting—pitching yourself as a possible guest and/or building your own (https://hhethmon.com/directory/)
    • Conferences – share what you’re presenting at a conference online and on Twitter. Share your Twitter handle with conference organizers, if they ask for it when you register.
    • CV and/or resume—put it on your website, if you have one
  • Your social media channels:
    • Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, ??
    • Website
    • Share original content on your own blog or podcast
    • Put a gateway to your online presence on your business cards

Managing your online presence

Congrats—you’ve built a presence online this work. Now what? 

  • Update your material regularly
  • What are you working on? Talk about it in relevant online spaces. Share with others. Build a dialogue online.
  • Follow people whose work interests you—engage with their posts on social media channels you frequent.
  • Follow and participate in online conversations in your field

Compiled by Hope Shannon, March 2019. 
Parts of this are adapted from “Managing Your Online Professional profile” by Prof. Kyle Roberts, March 2017.