Professional Social Networking

During second year it was important to expand my methods of marketing myself and making my name known. An easy way to do this, reaching vast expanses of people is through social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. This can be an area to exhibit your work, inform the public what projects you are currently working on, give contact details for potential employers. It can also be a place to express opinions on new products, trends and make-up work, however, this is a very sensitive area and should really only be used to express constructive and positive opinions as anybody could be reading what is being posted.

I was a little apprehensive about tackling the world of Twitter as it is not something that I am very familiar with, having never really used it properly from a personal perspective. It was difficult at first to pick up the technicalities like hash tagging and tweeting directly to or about someone, and what was meant by retweeting. I was also unsure as to how best to display my work as there did not appear to be any section that allowed the user to upload an album or collection of photos for permanent display, only to post a single photo at a time as a tweet. One thing that is very positive about Twitter is the ability to follow any make-up artist, celebrity or icon that may be of interest. In doing so it is also possible to see what other Twitter users are tweeting to or about these people. This meant that I was able to follow to projects of some of the most influential people in industry such as Ve Neil and Alex Box. I was shocked to discover that following certain members of industry can also raise awareness of my own Twitter page as after I followed Filippo Ioco, a famous body painter, he followed me back, meaning that he will see any tweets that I post about my work. Unfortunately my Twitter as been a little neglected since its creation with only 5 tweets being posted. This is something that I will definitely aim to improve upon over time to make it more of an active site that is readily used for networking.

Creating a professional Facebook page was a much less daunting process as I was already familiar with how the site worked and had a large network of friends online that I could market the new page to. Facebook also provides the opportunity to upload albums of photos which was perfect to act as a form of online portfolio for anybody wanting to view my variety of skills. As Facebook offers the option of uploading two photographs onto the profile page; one as a profile picture and one as a cover photo, I decided to include one professional image of my work and one image of myself at work, applying make-up (the same image used on my Twitter). Unfortunately, as with my website design I struggled to find a professional image of my work that was of a high enough standard and also exhibited the type of work that I would wish to market to the public. Ideally I would have liked to include an image of my skills in the area of prosthetics, however, I do not have any images that are of a high enough standard at the moment. Once my professional make-up project is complete I am confident that I will have a number of images that I will be happy to use for all promotional material, my Twitter and Facebook pages included. However, for the mean time, I stuck with the image used on my website and first business card; my Bollywood fashion make-up. 

In the 4 months since the creation of my professional Facebook page I received 100 'likes' (followers), which was a substantial improvement on my 10 followers on Twitter. I marketed the page through my personal Facebook page which means that the majority of these 'likes' are from friends and family. I have found recently, however, that a few external people are beginning to notice my page as friends, family and previous employers are sending people to my Facebook page to view my work. This would indicate that the use of social networking to raise awareness of yourself definitely does work. It is, however, dependant on the amount of time you are prepared to dedicate to advertising the page, posting interesting and relevant statuses and regularly uploading images.