STEP 2 (PART 2): BUILD A PURPOSEFUL ONLINE PRESENCE

Before diving too deep into this post, you will want to work through Step 1: Social Media Audit and Step 2 (Part 1): building a purposeful online presence.

If you worked through Step 1 and Step 2.1 then you should now have a cleaned up social media presence in general and one account you use to connect with the greater education community. You have also moved on to the next step towards making your online presence “sell you” as a teaching candidate by creating a basic website with Blogger, Google Sites, weebly, or wordpress. Now you are ready to add the important content to that website that will make you stand out from others applying for the same job you are.

We got through step 5 in the last post, so we will start with Step 6. We haven’t “launched” your site yet, so you are still the only person who can see it.

Step 6: Put the page we made last week on the menu at the top of your page.

Log onto your account at WordPress.com. Scroll down to “customize” on the left hand side. Click on “customize,” not on the “themes” button next to it. On the left hand side you’ll see “menus.” Click there.

You’ll just stick with a primary menu for now. Click on “primary.” Click on “+ Add Items” and the page you created last week should pop up as an option on the right hand side. Select it to add. Scroll down a little bit farther on the left hand side to where it says “Menu locations” and check the box for “primary.” Then click the “publish” button on the top of the page.

Step 7: Add your teaching philosophy as a blog post.

Head back to your main “admin page” by clicking the “x” in the upper lefthand corner. Now scroll down to “blog posts” on the left hand side and click on “add” next to the words “blog posts.”

Where it says “title,” type in “Teaching Philosophy.” If you have your teaching philosophy saved as a PDF like I do you can click on the square with the mountain in it just below the title and upload your PDF.

If you don’t have it saved as an image, you can copy and paste it from where ever you have it saved.

You’ll also want to add an image to make it look nice when you publish it. Look on the right hand side of the page. Make sure the word “document” is highlighted at the top, not “block.” Scroll down to where it says “featured image” and click on “set featured image.” Upload whatever image you’d like, but make sure you have the rights to the image or get it from Creative Commons.

Step 8: Now that you’ve created both a page and a blog post, you can decide how you want to input the rest of your content.

Some posts or blogs you should consider including:

• Your resume
• Your teaching philosophy
• Your classroom management philosophy
• A few reflections on lessons that went really well.  Posting a straight lesson plan would be pretty boring, but if you can talk briefly about a lesson’s objectives and the activities you had the kids to do achieve them and then you can show artifacts (pictures, etc) that prove that the kids did achieve those objectives, that’s a lot more fun for potential employers to look at.
• If you get a really sweet thank you note from a student or parent for the work you’ve done, you could include a photo of it on one of your pages. Just make sure to remove last names.
• If you’ve done anything else that you really want an employer to see include that as well. Like pictures of you coaching a kid’s sports team or helping to sponsor a club during your student teaching, or mentoring/tutoring etc.

Step 9: You have a cleaned up social media profile on some platform from Step 1. Link to that account from your webpage.

You can do that by going to your social media page, highlight the URL in the bar at the top, and clicking on Control+C. Then go to your blog post or page and highlight the word you want to link to your social media page and click on the link button. Then click Control+V to paste the URL and click the little arrow button on the right to finish.

Step 10: Don’t forget to have some way for potential employers or other teachers to contact you from the site whether that is an email address or a “Contact Me” fill in page.

If you are using WordPress, it automatically sets up a “contact me” page for you.

When you are ready for the world to see your site, make sure to press the “launch” button in the upper right hand corner of your main admin page.

You may also want to include a link to your portfolio in correspondence with potential employers or on digital versions of your resume. Some online applications will even give you an option to include the link right on the application.

Don’t put in all this work just for no one to see it! Get that link out there!

Now that we have a positive online presence, we’d better make sure that’s what a potential employer sees when they Google you. Scroll down and subscribe to get the next steps in our four steps to making yourself a better teaching candidate. I will never sell your information or spam you and it’s totally free. You can also follow me on Twitter @TeachersGuide)

Check out the other steps:

STEP 1 towards making yourself a better candidate for a teaching job: SOCIAL MEDIA AUDIT

STEP 2 (PART 1): BUILD A PURPOSEFUL ONLINE PRESENCE

STEP 2 (PART 2): BUILD A PURPOSEFUL ONLINE PRESENCE

STEP 3: Google yourself the smart way

If you found this post helpful, check out some of my other posts:

How to get an interview

8 things you should know before going in for your interview

5 Steps to prepare for an interview

7 Tips to rock an interview

25 Buzz words you need to know

27 education buzz words you need to know in 2022

How to decide between teaching in the city or the suburbs

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