How to Use Social Media in Your Career

Social media is now a critical part of the way people in most walks of life communicate and a key part of how work gets done — from corporations to government. Reflecting how important social media can be, the Department of Homeland Security is collecting social media profiles of potential immigrants as part of its evaluation process. 

Social media allows you to do at least four important things: 

• Discover new ideas and trends.
• Connect with existing and new audiences in deeper ways
• Bring attention and traffic to your work.
• Build, craft and enhance your brand.  

As social media has become more popular — an estimated 81 percent of Americans have a social media account — there are also more instances of people who have gotten in trouble for their social networking habits. The fact is that it’s impossible to separate the personal use of social from the professional, and everything you say online can and will be used against you. There are ways in which you can try to safeguard your privacy and control who sees particular content, but the onus is on you to be vigilant. So, the more seriously you can take your social media activities, the better.

Social media changes all the time, so it’s important to keep up with the evolution of the platforms and to keep looking for ways to optimize your use of the available the tools. (Twitter and Snapchat, for example, recently announced major changes that are described below.)

If you don’t work for yourself, be aware of company policies about the use of social media — more and more corporations are instituting or revising their policies.