Build an Audience for Your Job to Improve Your Chances of Finding a Job
Self-promotion is just a waste of self-indulgence, right? Not if you want to build a career. If you’re creative, build an audience for yourself to give yourself more job opportunities.
As the productivity site 99u explains, in the modern era, jobs can be obtained from anywhere. Sometimes it comes from a job listing site, but it could just as easily come from a guy on Twitter who saw your job and liked it (actually, that’s how I got my job!). By building an audience for your work, you give yourself insurance when you need to seek creative work:
This is why building an audience is a guarantee of work. There’s a reason the creative audience flocks to Medium and Twitter. The “premium” for this job insurance is not money. It is transparency in your process, firm convictions that you share with the world and do it regularly. Usually, though not always, it means writing. But it can also mean collecting the email addresses of those who love your work. Or publish case studies of everything you are working on. Or direct people to follow you on a specific network (we suggest Bēhance, but we’re biased). Too often, creatives do it after the fact, only when they need a new gig.
It might seem futile at first. It’s easy to fall into the trap of growing followers and focus on hashtags and analytics instead of genuinely sharing what you do. You don’t have to turn into an “SEO guru” or anything like that. But by providing yourself with a platform for your work, you let everyone else know where to look when it’s time for them to start hiring.
The Most Reasonable Thing You Can Do For Your Career: Build Your Audience | 99u