6 Effective Ways to Market Your Career Skills with Instagram
Publié le 30 May 2022
Utilizing 6 effective ways to market your career skills with Instagram is a great way for employees and job seekers to advertise your ability online.
In the last few years, Instagram’s community has hit 2 billion monthly active users, 86% of whom are representatives of the full-time active workforce, aged between 18 and 54 years.
As one of the most popular social media platforms, Instagram has affected changes in user behavior, including important aspects of professional life. Today, this platform is used for far more than just posting selfies or food; it has become a valuable tool for job searching, promoting your professional brand and making important virtual connections between peers and potential employers.
Why Market Your Career Skills with Instagram?
No matter what your profession, whether you’re a web designer or an accountant, ignoring Instagram as a job searching tool can be a serious social media marketing mistake. Why? Instagram has great potential for job seekers as it helps to achieve the following goals:
- Raise personal brand awareness and trust: Since an average Instagram user spends 53 minutes a day in-app, it’s easier for people to discover new products and services on the platform. This means it’s an opportunity to raise your personal brand awareness and trust when you market your career skills on Instagram.
- Create a professional portfolio: Most people are visual learners, so it’s no wonder that the visual platform Instagram continues to attract more users. With a focus on photo and video content, it can be a good place to create an eye-catching professional portfolio.
- Build a strong network: Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms for communication and users are interested in following other profiles on the platform. It gives job seekers an opportunity to establish beneficial relationships with other professionals in this niche, build a strong network, get professional recommendations and learn of new job offers and opportunities.
Want to know more about leverage Instagram as part of your career branding strategy? Here are 6 effective ways to market your career skills with Instagram and therefore get more clients on social media!
6 Effective Ways to Market Your Career Skills with Instagram
1. Make the Most Out of Your Instagram Bio
The first thing people see when visiting your Instagram account is a bio section, a short yet descriptive part of your profile that allows you to tell more about your skills and services in 150 characters or less.
Since people have a short attention span of 8 seconds, it’s important to create an eye-catching bio section that can spark interest in you as a pro. You can include information about your career skills, add relevant hashtags, and link to your portfolio and other relevant info.
A well-written bio section also includes contact information such as phone number and email address. When you add this information, not only does it help potential employers contact you directly, but it also helps to protect your account if someone tries to hack your Instagram account. How? When your account contains this information, it helps to set up two-factor authentication (2FA) and it also allows you to send yourself a password reset email.
Using the clickable bio link, you can add a lead generation landing page and collect leads from interested visitors and then send welcome wishes to people who decide to become your clients. Following up is a great way to create personal brand trust.
To market your career skills successfully with an Instagram bio, take the following steps:
- Select a relevant category that represents what you do
- Write your profession as part of your name
- Add a clickable link that goes to your resume
- Describe your skills and abilities in the bio
- Link back to other Instagram handles (if you have any)
- Include hashtags that describe your profession
- Connect any virtual numbers to the contact information
2. Tell More About Your Career Experience
Over the course of your career path, you may try out different types of jobs, projects, or volunteer work. This career experience gives your potential employers a better understanding of what they can expect after hiring you, so it’s a good idea to tell more about your career experience on your Instagram account.
Here are several efficient ways to tell more about your career experience on Instagram:
- Upload your infographic resume to your profile
- Tell about your experience with video Instagram Stories
- Create fun and interesting Instagram Reels
Want to get the attention of potential employers? Create explainer videos that tell more about your career experience or services you can provide. You can use Instagram story maker to create unique templates that will help you stand out. Being dynamic and interactive, videos have gained popularity among social media users. In fact, the time spent watching videos on Instagram have increased by 80% year over year which means people are interested in video content.
3. Publish Samples of Your Work
It’s no secret that many HR specialists ask job candidates for work samples during the recruitment process. When using Instagram for job hunting, it’s a good idea to publish samples of your work on the profile.
If your services make sense for a visual platform, it’s easy to showcase your samples. Even if you’re a copywriter, however, you can still add visual appeal and utilize textual content to promote your work – just hook potential employers with an eye-catching visual and tell about your achievements in a caption. The easiest way to do it is to use graphic design tools like InstaSize which offer a wide array of templates for non-designers to make visuals that match brand identity with ease.
4. Use Instagram Stories and Reels
Today, Instagram Stories have around 500 million daily active users. As a result, creating Stories can be a good way to market your career skills. Moreover, Stories appear on a separate feed which helps to beat an Instagram algorithm and get your content seen by as wide an audience as possible.
What is more, Stories have a great number of features that help you market your career skills. Here are several features that can help you promote yourself as a pro:
- Hashtags or geotags: Make your Stories visible to the audience in your neighborhood
- Support small business sticker: Invite your colleagues or friends to support your small business if you’re a freelancer
- Question sticker: Understand your network better with this sticker to provide them with useful information
- Poll stickers: Ask followers if they are interested in your professional advice
- Clickable Story link: Add a link that goes to your resume
But if you want to reach a wider audience of potential employers, you can create short yet engaging 15-second multi-clip videos for Instagram Reels with audio effects. Reels allow users to create a series of clips that makes it easier for candidates to tell more about their career experience or professional skills in order to engage clients.
5. Team Up with Other People in Your Niche
Networking has always been an important part of career development. When other professionals recommend you and testifies to your abilities, work ethic and professionalism, it gives an opportunity to get more job opportunities.
Case in point:
When the Korean leading English education business Yanadoo decided to offer its services to more students, the company made an Instagram ad campaign in collaboration with top Instagram influencers to create branded content ads.
Working with influencers resulted in a 20% decrease in cost per purchase, a 24% decrease in cost per level test completion, and a 35% increase in click-to-purchase rate. In short, word-of-mouth marketing still works best, so you can team up with other professionals in your niche to co-promote your skills on Instagram to attract more clients on social media.
6. Run Instagram Ads
Instagram prioritizes content from friends and family, so 2 million monthly advertisers invest their budget in publishing sponsored posts. With advanced settings, it makes it easier to target people that matter most to your personal brand which means you can market your career skills and get a job offer faster.
When creating your ad campaign, it’s important to choose the right campaign objective – increase reach, generate leads or drive website traffic – that can attract the attention of potential employers and therefore help you stand out from the crowd of other candidates.
Conclusion
As a visual platform, Instagram isn’t the most obvious tool for job seekers, but it has great potential for people who want to market their career skills. With a fast-growing and engaged user base, this platform has a great number of potential employers who may be interested in doing business with you.
What is more, when you market your career skills with Instagram, you stay ahead of other job seekers. Thus, don’t miss a chance to find your next job opportunity and start utilizing 6 effective ways to market your career skills with Instagram today.
