By Sofia Bergstrom
Editorial Columnist

Some people think of social media as God’s gift to man as it allows us to connect with people all across the globe, brag about our latest vacation trip and show off how many friends we have. On the other hand, there are those who curse its manipulative nature and how it is, slowly but surely, taking over our lives by making people procrastinate on important commitments and tasks.

Nonetheless, social media is here to stay, whether we like it or not. And to successfully navigate through the social media jungle and the growing number of platforms can be challenging.

Luckily for us living close to the nation’s capital, there is always something going on around the corner, and recently I attended an event organized by Social Media Club D.C., in the hopes of learning more about social media and how to use it for personal branding.

What became clear to me throughout the night was that we should not underestimate the power of social media, whether it is for personal or business purposes. The reason: LinkedIn, an online social network for business professionals.

Brittany Cooper of New Media Strategies and a keynote speaker at the event stressed that LinkedIn is a great way to connect with people inside a specific company when you are looking for a job or a prospective business partner. Start engaging in an online conversation with a person inside a company, perhaps asking a question about the company, and you are halfway there.

Cooper also said that many businesses are now only accepting job applications from LinkedIn. Therefore, in order to stay ahead of the game, it is crucial to have a thorough profile with your previous work experience, skills, educational background, etc. LinkedIn allows users to turn their entire profiles into professional resumes that include all this information.

I jumped onboard the LinkedIn train a while back when one of my journalism professors told me to. However, I never took it seriously, which is why my account has been awfully inactive since I set it up. Also, since I haven’t made any efforts in expanding the number of connections, LinkedIn’s equivalence to Facebook friends, my profile has remained fairly anonymous out there in cyberspace. Although I haven’t shed any tears of my lack of connections, that is about to change, because what I concluded from attending this event was the following: LinkedIn is a great tool in the quest for the perfect internship or job.

Besides using the powers of social media platforms in order to network, the event made realize that we — a generation that has been raised with internet and technology evolving at the speed of light — should take advantage of our superior knowledge of social media platforms at the companies we work or intern for.

The fact is that the majority of people at most work places have no clue as to what social media really entails. As strange as this might seem, some people do not immediately think of a social media platform when they hear the word “Twitter.” Instead, they might think of birds and nature (yes, that old fashioned stuff still exists).

My workplace is no exception, and my fellow intern and I have made several efforts in expanding our firm’s social media outreach. We tweet on their Twitter account, and we make sure that the company’s blog is updated with interesting posts on a regular basis. We also try to interact with influential people in the same business in order to spread the word of the company. Even though these social media strategies are in the embryo stage, we have received positive feedback from the people at our company.

Unfortunately, the end of the semester is approaching, which means that I am heading back home to Sweden. The chances of me running into you at any of the campuses are therefore very small. The chances of us bumping into each other out there in cyberspace are bigger. The digital era is here.

By: Contributing Author

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