There’s a lot of talk around creative industries about the need to build a social media platform to help build your fan base and keep them informed about what you’re working on and what you’ve recently released. It’s not bad advice, and sometimes creators and companies even manage to put that advice to work without making things worse. But it’s something we should be encouraging students to embrace and think about as they start testing the online waters for themselves.
For all of us, social media really is a running Demonstration Phase. Everything we say, do, share…all of it ends up in front of an audience of one sort or another. And we post a lot without really thinking about it beyond a sense of, “OMG, you have to check this out!”…when really…we probably didn’t need to check it out. If you’re primarily using social media to share things with friends, then it’s not as big a deal. And for many students, this is exactly how they use social media, without any thought to future impact or what constitutes “public” and “private”. But that’s a discussion for another time.
If you’re using it to show off work, to share information, or to do anything that reflects on you or your skills, then you might want to take a slightly different approach. One that not only shows you off, but also leaves visitors with a better understanding of who you are and where you’re coming from. And isn’t that the point of the Demonstration Phase?
When setting up your platform, though, it’s not particularly helpful to just plaster everything across every social media platform you have access to, or to make them all the same. Each platform has a different etiquette, a different set of expectations, and may provide you with a different audience looking for something different. So, it’s best to keep to the platforms you enjoy using, or where the audience you most want to connect with is hanging out, and then to really tailor that platform toward that audience. You also have to interact with that audience so they’ll really get a chance to know who you are and what you haven’t already told them.
Working to build a social media platform that reflects you and your work can be time-consuming initially, but the more you work on it, the less time it can consume. It’s an opportunity to paint your own portrait of who you are, how you want people to view your work, and encourage people to feel comfortable about approaching you about your work.
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