Tyson Domingo | Photo Co-Editor

At Buena Vista University (BVU), students are taught to make use of social media in order to create a large network in order to access the professional field. As students embark on the search for a career placement, the content they put online can mean the difference between a new job and a longer search. When students create social media content, it’s also important for them to be continually aware of what they are posting. This way, students can maintain a professional social media presence regardless for whom they are working for.

Associate Manager of Web and New Media at BVU Josh Weitzel has had much experience working with the increase of social media at BVU. As part of a social media team, Weitzel optimizes effectiveness, strategies, and convergence of social media by implementing both practical and advising roles.

When collaborating with the rest of the team to post content on various social media, Weitzel comments on the audience—BVU and its vast community.

“We always try to make our most important consideration our audience,” Weitzel said. “What works on social media sometimes is knowing your audience really well.”

Trying to decide what should be posted personally or as an organization can be a thought provoking task especially when considering a large audience and knowing they want to read important posts.

Sophomore corporate communications major Kayla Lohse has also had experience working with social media, as she was the Vice President of Communications for BVU’s Student Activities Board (SAB) during the Fall 2013 semester. She says that relevance is key to a successful post.

“People don’t like to read boring posts, so I tried to make the posts witty and have a play on words,” Lohse said. “Basically have it pertain to SAB and what we believed in.”

Although a professional presence is what seems to be expected from all audiences, sometimes businesses, organizations, and people can play around with those rules.

“I think it depends on the type of organization or business and how you’re trying to be perceived by your consumers or customers,” Lohse said. “So for SAB, we’re trying to tailor our page to the students.”

Weitzel also believes that authenticity is important and that “all businesses have different ways to approach things.”

“I do think it depends on maybe what your business is,” Weitzel said.

These two social media gurus on the BVU campus, have come up with some tips for maintaining a professional social media presence for readers of The Tack Online, and here are a few of them for you to have in the back of your mind and at the front of your fingertips.

1) Improve the beginning – Take the time to fill in the blanks when starting from scratch or go back and fill in those simple holes in your profile that can make an enormous difference.

“You’d be surprised by how many businesses there are that have a Facebook page, but they don’t maybe have a cover photo,” Weitzel said.

2) Listen and respond – Whether it’s your personal account or one of an organization that you manage, listen to what your audience has to say, and be interactive to show that you appreciate their presence.

“A business should be watching things, and they should respond, like if someone asks them a question,” Weitzel said.

3) Deletion isn’t always the best option – Deleting a post fuels the fire and allows the audience a greater chance to react to you or your organization in a negative way.

“Never, ever, ever delete a post,” Lohse said. “You can address the bad or wrong post in another post, but never delete it.”

4) Avoid over-promotion – People tend to get bored and don’t want to hear about what you have to offer as much as you are posting about it.

“The first instinct of businesses is to… over-promote,” Weitzel said.

5) Have a little fun – Social media content creation can be fun, so don’t stress out too much over your content.

“Try to have fun with it. If you’re not having fun posting on it, people are going to start realizing it,” Lohse said.

Keeping these tips in mind can help you think twice before clicking on that post button. They can save you the trouble of having to question what kept you from being selected as the best candidate for a dream position or from a raging storm from your organization’s consumers.

Photo by Tyson Domingo