Tags
blogs, career, Facebook, freelance, Linked in, music, orchestras, Quartet, Social media, Twitter, violin, Wordpress
As part of the Postgrad course I am on we have to complete a module entitled – ‘Professional Development’. All sounds rather posh! One of our sessions was about how we can use Social Media to forward our careers. I have to be honest I wasn’t entirely sure whether I would find this very useful, after all what can be better than word of mouth in the music world????
There were discussions about blogs – e.g. wordpress and the others. How blog templates are now frequently being used for personal websites because the user can alter content easily and use layouts to customize their own site, without having to pay for a web designer. Examples were shown and I was really impressed with what people were doing with their sites. This started to get me thinking.
Then Twitter was mentioned! I hadn’t signed up for a Twitter account, I have a personal Facebook page and hadn’t given much thought about Twitter. Dave Harte pointed out that Twitter can be very good for networking with any industry; find professionals you want to link with and keep adding. Then your number of followers will increase! Then we have how to make sure your name appears in search engines so more people will find out about you. Yes you can pay, but if you blog enough on one topic then you should appear in the results when people search, for example me with music and the violin. The lecture really got me thinking about what I could to do to improve my employ ability prospects in the freelance world.
How have I embraced the social media? I had signed up to Twitter months ago but never used it, so I changed my name, updated my profile and started tweeting! Anything to do with the music world, news, rehearsals and gigs I am doing. I started to follow orchestras, professional musicians and friends. Within a few weeks I am up to 27 followers, including The Carducci Quartet and the London Philharmonic.
This WordPress account came next! I want the blog to showcase the work I do in the music industry. From gigs I do with my String Quartet – Harper Quartet, orchestras I play with and my venture into the professional world of music. So far it has been easy to set up the blog, there are many themes to pick and customize. For ideas on what to include and get a better idea I researched a few blogs to get a general idea. One blog I follow is Lucy G Photography, a photographer based in Cheshire and Hereford, whom I went to school with. She has set herself up in the photography world and is doing very well. She is using social media in a way that is successful for her and is something I am trying to emulate.
I have also signed up to Linked in, I am slowly starting to build up connections through people I know. By keeping my profile up to date and make sure I make new connections regularly I should start to build up a good base.
It has been an interesting journey so far. A great aspect on WordPress is being able to see how many people are viewing your blog and where they are clicking from. I am looking forward to seeing the effect social media can have on my career. I will look back in a years time to see what has happened!!