3.0 Building your Professional Digital Profile

 

(photo credit: Xiaxue)

I’m sure many of you recognise her. If you don’t, she is Southeast Asia most prominent blogger, Wendy Cheng (Xiaxue- it means SNOWING) with over 500K followers on Instagram and more than 300K ‘Likes’ on Facebook. Lets take her as an example for today’s topic on ‘Building Our Professional Digital Profile’. As a blogger, her professionalism is to create hype and buzz with interesting contents to invite more readers and clientele. Below are her social media platforms:

Blog: 

YouTube Channel

ClickNetworkTV- an online TV network

Facebook & Instagram

After exploring her Social Media sites and her progress as a renowned blogger. There are some learning points to take away..

With relations to the set question, “authentic” means being real and honest. Xiaxue has proven this point, she uses profanity in her posts and her success has been attributed to her provocative writing style. She does not put on a fake mask just because she blogs and afraid of criticism. She writes her post with sincere opinions and comments about what she thinks and I believe is the reason why she famous today… Similarly, employers would not hire someone who portrays as someone whom they are not during an interview. Research by Cross-Tab Marketing has shown that 75% of HR departments worldwide are required to screen job candidates online. This can be inferred that a written Curriculum Vitae and Resume is not adequate for organisations.

Secondly, I feel it’s important to captivate your audience or in Xiaxue’s case, clientele, she needs to write robust headlines, common topics among youths or interesting news of herself such as going through plastic surgeries and transformation. According to a survey she conducted, which attracted 6000 responses; her readers are mainly Singaporean, female, young adults interested in fashion and “looking for an alternative voice”. On the other hand, job-lookers should create an open summary about themselves on social media and institutional platforms like LinkedIn. This way it allows employers to know more about you in a gist…

Lastly, it is always important to keep it consistent (you never know what impression you might give). Back to Xiaxue, her social media platforms are consistent in a way its ‘pink’ and ‘girly-like’, her name is found on every platform and readers would know about her when ‘Xiaxue’ is mentioned. It acts as an image or branding of her. In our case, we should always keep our digital profile consistent and simple, by being straightforward and having same profile picture on LinkedIn, Facebook and etc. By being consistent, it also relates to my first point of knowing who you are (watch the video below to find out more).

With the advancement in technology, it is crucial that everyone should have at least one social media account that acts like a Resume. I believe that a professional digital profile entices more to employers. It should always be up to date and creative to give a deep impression about who you are and what you can offer the company with your expertise.

TO SURVIVE, BE SOCIAL MEDIA SAVVY!

---

REFERENCES:

Xiaxue. 2003. [ONLINE] Available at: http://xiaxue.blogspot.sg/search?updated-min=2014-01-01T00:00:00%2B08:00&updated-max=2015-01-01T00:00:00%2B08:00&max-results=12 [Accessed on 3 December 2014]

“Building your online professional profile” [ONLINE] Available at: https://connect.soton.ac.uk/p32693389/ [Accessed on 3 December 2014]

Doyle, A. Online Profiles for Job Searching. [ONLINE] Available at: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/professionalbranding/a/profiles.htm [Accessed on 3 December 2014]