Career professionals these days need an online presence to attract prospective employers and clients. A strong online presence in modern times is akin to getting published in a trade journal. You can’t imitate academic prestige on the web. However, you can be seen by people important to your field with an online presence.
With that in mind, here is how you can slowly build your professional profile on the web without spending a lot of money:
Create a Personal Website and a Blog
Start by designing your own website. Don’t mistake this for your Facebook page or the Instagram feed. You must have your own site intended for professional purposes (so your WordPress blog doesn’t count). You can add a blog to the website so prospective clients can read the blog and also browse your credentials and services on offer.
You can build cheap websites from $795 in Australia in select local areas. Take advantage of a budget-provider to design a unique site that showcases your professionalism. The designer can add fresh touches to your blog as well, so it stands out from the rest of the blogs out there.
Upload Your Resume to LinkedIn
Don’t expect prospective employers or clients to look you up on Facebook. The ultimate social network for career services is LinkedIn. You need to create a polished profile on LinkedIn. Essentially, your profile would consist of your resume and a short brief about yourself and your work.
You can contribute to content on LinkedIn to boost your professional profile. For example, you can create short videos or write blog posts to attract attention of others on the network.
Write Guest Blog Posts
Building one’s own blog from scratch is hard work. Most bloggers work for years to build a reliable reader base. There’s a shortcut to blogger fame: write guest posts on other blogs that are already popular.
You can promote your professional bio and also your own site or blog with this technique. Do some online research to find out which blogs are popular in your field. Then you can request to have your guest post published. Include a link or two to drive traffic to your own blog or site.
Write Opinion Posts for Newspapers and Online Media Publications
One of the best ways to build your credentials online is to write to traditional media publications with online sites. Journalism publications are a step above bloggers in the online credibility ladder. The links you generate would be more authoritative as well.
Journalists don’t typically cover professionals unless there’s something newsworthy or of human interest to write about you. However, most publications willingly accept opinion pieces from writers. You don’t need to necessarily have a famous career background either. If what you have to say is interesting, a newspaper would most likely publish it.
Offer Quotes
You can offer quotes to journalists, other bloggers, and even websites. It would increase your visibility on the web, or at least on Google search rankings. There could be online retailers, product sellers, and other people in need of quotes to improve authority of things they sell. As long as you are responsible, offering a quote would be largely harmless.
You can try one or two of the above methods to build your professional profile on the internet. It will take some time, but you have start somewhere.